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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT, 



STARVED ROCK 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



STARVED ROCK 



BY 

EDGAR LEE MASTERS 

n 

Author of "Spoon River Anthology," "Songs and 

Satires," "The Great Valley," "Toward 
the Gulf," etc. 



jQeto gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1919 

All rights reserved 






.** 



A 



COPYBIGHT, 1919 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1919 



NOV 12 1919 



\535686 






Certain of these poems first appeared in Reedy 's Mirror, 
Poetry, The Cosmopolitan, The Yale Review and The 
New York Sun. 



STARVED ROCK 

As a soul from whom companionships subside 

The meaningless and onsweeping tide 

Of the river hastening, as it would disown 

Old ways and places, left this stone 

Of sand above the valley, to look down 

Miles of the valley, hamlet, village, town. 

* * * * * 
It is a head-gear of a chief whose head, 
Down from the implacable brow, 
Waiting is held below 

The waters, feather decked 

With blossoms blue and red, 

With ferns and vines ; 

Hiding beneath the waters, head erect, 

His savage eyes and treacherous designs. 

* * * * * 
It is a musing memory and memorial 

Of geologic ages 

Before the floods began to fall ; 

The cenotaph of sorrows, pilgrimages 

Of Marquette and LaSalle. 

The eagles and the Indians left it here 

In solitude, blown clean 

to 



STARVED ROCK 

Of kindred things : as an oak whose leaves are sere 
Fly over the valley when the winds are keen, 
And nestle where the earth receives 
Another generation of exhausted leaves. 

***** 

Fatigued with age its sleepless eyes look over 

Fenced fields of corn and wheat, 

Barley and clover. 

The lowered pulses of the river beat 

Invisibly by shores that stray 

In progress and retreat 

Past Utica and Ottawa, 

And past the meadow where the Illini 

Shouted and danced under the autumn moon, 

When toddlers and papooses gave a cry, 

And dogs were barking for the boon 

Of the hunter home again to clamorous tents 

Smoking beneath the evening's copper sky. 

Later the remnant of the Illini 

Climbed up this Rock, to die 

Of hunger, thirst, or down its sheer ascents 

Rushed on the spears of Pottawatomies, 

And found the peace 

Where thirst and hunger are unknown. 

***** 

This is the tragic and the fateful stone 
Le Rocher or Starved Rock, 
A symbol and a paradigm, 
A sphinx of elegy and battle hymn, 
[2] 



STARVED ROCK 

Whose lips unlock 

Life's secret, which is vanishment, defeat, 

In epic dirges for the races 

That pass and leave no traces 

Before new generations driven in the blast 

Of Time and Nature blowing round its head. 

Renewing in the Present what the Past 

Knew wholly, or in part, so to repeat 

Warfare, extermination, old things dead 

But brought to life again 

In Life's immortal pain. 



What Destinies confer, 

And laughing mock 

LaSalle, his dreamings stir 

To wander here, depart 

The fortress of Creve Coeur, 

Of broken heart, 

For this fort of Starved Rock? 

After the heart is broken then the cliff 

Where vultures flock; 

And where below its steeps the savage skiff 

Cuts with a pitiless knife the rope let down 

For water. From the earth this Indian town 

Vanished and on this Rock the Illini 

Thirsting, their buckets taken with the knife, 

Lay down to die. 



[3] 



STARVED ROCK 

This is the land where every generation 
Lets down its buckets for the water of Life. 
We are the children and the epigone 
Of the Illini, the vanished nation. 
And this starved scarp of stone 
Is now the emblem of our tribulation, 
The inverted cup of our insatiable thirst, 
The Illini by fate accursed, 
This land lost to the Pottawatomies, 
They lost the land to us, 
Who baffled and idolatrous, 
And thirsting, spurred by hope 
Kneel upon aching knees, 

And with our eager hands draw up the bucketless rope. 
***** 

This is the tragic, the symbolic face, 

Le Rocher or Starved Rock, 

Round which the eternal turtles drink and swim 

And serpents green and strange, 

As race comes after race, 

War after war. 

This is the sphinx whose Memnon lips breathe dirges 

To empire's wayward star, 

And over the race's restless urges, 

Whose lips unlock 

Life's secret which is vanishment and change. 



[4] 



HYMN TO THE DEAD 

O, you who have gone from the ways of cities, 

From the peopled places, the streets of strife, 

From offices, markets, rooms, retreats, 

Pastoral ways, hamlets, everywhere from the earth, 

And have made of the emptiness of your departure 

A land, a country, a realm all your own, 

Set above the hills of our vision, an empire 

Within, around, above our empire of days, 

Of pain and clamorous tongues; 

An empire which out of a sovereign silence 

Stretches its power over the restless multitude 

Of our thoughts, and the ceaseless music of our beings, 

And surrounds us even as the air we breathe — 

O ye majestic Dead, hear our hymn! 



The clown, the wastrel and the fool in life 

Are lifted up by you, O Death! 

The least of these who has entered in 

Your realm, O Death, 

Is greater than the greatest of us, 

And by a transfiguration has been clothed 

With the glory and the wonder of nature. 

He has drunk of the purple cup of apotheosis, 

And passed through the mvstical change, 

[5] 



STARVED ROCK 

And accomplished the cycle of being. 

He has risen from the lowlands of earth 

Into the air on wings of breath. 

He has rejected the shell of the body, feet and hands, 

He has become one with the majesty of Time, 

And taken the kingdom of triumph 

Whether it be cessation or bliss. 

For he has entered into the kingdom of primal powers, 

Being or ceasing to be, 

Even as he has re-entered the womb of nature. 

Or he has found peace, 

States of wisdom, or vision — 

Hail! realm of Silence, 

Whence comes the unheard symphony too deep for 

strings, 
Hail, infinite Light, 
Darkness to eyes of flesh — 
All hail! 



What are we, the living, beside you the dead ? 
We of daily hunger, daily food, daily ablutions, 
The daily rising and lying down, 
Waking and sleep; 
The daily care of the body's needs; 
And daily desire to pass the gift of life; 
And daily fears of the morrow to come; 
And daily pains for things that are gone; 
And daily longing for things that fly us; 
And sorrow that follows wherever we go; 
[6] 



HYMN TO THE DEAD 

And love that mocks us, and peace that breaks, 

And shame that tracks us, and want that gnaws. 

But O ye Dead! Ye great ones, 

Triumphant over these, released 

From the duties of dust, all chains of desire, 

And made inhabitants of breathless spaces, 

Immanent in a realm of calm, 

Rulers of a sphere of tideless air, 

Victors returned from the war of death in life, 

Victors over death in death! 



For the growing soul turns in 
Even as the seed turns in on itself, 
And becomes hard, transparent, 
An encased life, condensed 
In the process of saving itself 
From rains that beat in the fall, 
And frosts that descend from skies grown cold. 
And we who shed away old thoughts and hopes, 
Days and dreams of life 
Turn in, grow clear like grains of rice, 
Until the realm of death 
Is as snow delivered land 
Luring the seed — 

And it becomes our home, our country, 
Our native land that calls us back 
From this sojourn of adventure, 
And place of profit; 

For O ye majestic Dead, your absence draws us, 
[7] 



STARVED ROCK 

If it be naught but absence still you summon, 
Your absence has become a very Presence, 
A Power, a hierarchy of Life! 



Even as leaves enrich the earth 

Layer on layer, 

Even as bodies of men enrich the soil 

Generation on generation, 

So do the spirits of those departed 

Enrich our soil of life 

With delights, wisdoms, purest hopes, 

And shapes of beauty. 

But oh beyond all these, is our life enriched 

With exalted contemplations 

Of you, O glorious Dead, 

Who have eaten of the tree of life and become gods, 

Friendly divinities to us who remain, 

Dear familiars, as you were with us 

Fathers, children, lovers, friends. 

Ye who sense with the inner eye, 

Since nothing in our days of living 

Moves uncolored of your splendors, 

Presences to which all things relate! 

* * * * * 

O realm of the Dead, 
Black Mountain, if you be, 
Which darkens heaven, 
And shadows earth, 
Round which our spirits flutter 
[8] 



HYMN TO THE DEAD 

Like startled moths. 

Black mountain with whose blackness 

The light of life is mixed, 

Whereof all hues are made: 

All thoughts, all lofty wanderings of the soul, 

All meanings, divinations 

Of briefest hours, and frailest joys, 

All wonders of the spectrum of the soul 

Out of life and death ! 

***** 

Realm of the Dead ! Supreme Reality 
All Hail! 



[9] 



CREATION 

Passion flower unfolding in darkness! 

Glow-worm under a spray of lilac! 

Flame on the altar of love! 

Beloved in your chamber! 

The phoenix moon rising from the ashes of day 

Spreads her wings of saffron fire 

Above the enchanted garden. 

And I brush away the leaves of night 

To find the star of my love. 

I part the curtains about the altar, 

I enter your chamber, beloved. 

* * * * * 

I have entered your chamber, beloved, 

I have found my star. 

Between kisses and whispers 

And the silken touch of flesh 

Breast to breast, lips to lips, 

Our souls are seeking and drifting! 

As an albatross hovers and flies 

With the running sea . . . 

Powers of body, powers of spirit, 

Divinities 

Awakened never before, 

Hidden in nerves asleep, in veins without a tide 

[10] 



CREATION 

Flow through us. 
I give you my life, beloved, 
For life of you, given to me — 
O bride of love ! 



O hair of fire! O breasts of light, 

Like double stars! 

O voice like a lute that whispers 

At midnight, in a bower of roses! 

O body luminous as the nebulous waste 

Across the midnight, 

Pour on my breast, my hands, my brow 

The sacred fire, 

As our flesh becomes one 

Upborne by your breasts, 

White as bridal blossoms 

Where there is yet no milk, 

But only eddying blood 

Circling in whirlpools of delirious ecstasy 

In time with the blood of me. 

Our lips together, our bodies together 

While the yearning urn of porphyry 

Waits to drink the silver stream, 

And thirsts to drink, 

And poises like a gold fish waiting 

For the stream of silver fire. . . . 

But oh, hands of me that clasp your sunny head, 
Drawing it close to my breast, 

[ii] 



STARVED ROCK 

In rapture of its beauty! 

O temple of your spirit! 

Spirit of you which I woo and would win, 

In rapture without will, 

In rapture blind, save for the inspired urge, 

In rapture seeking further rapture, 

In rapture to wed your spirit fully, 

And all your spirit, which my spirit 

Through the unity of flesh would reach 

And win, and keep — 

Bride of lightning! 

Bride of Life! 



As when the butterfly slowly moves his wings 
Drawing from the virgin core of honeysuckles 
The sweetest drop of dew : — 
So pause his wings spread wide 
When all is gained. 

***** 

Goddess of the white dawn, 
Let my beloved sleep — 
Robins that sing at dawn, 
Wake not my beloved! 
I sleep with my beloved, 
And she sleeps with me, 
And a life sleeps now 
That will wake! 



[12] 



THE WORLD'S DESIRE 

At Philae, in the temple of Isis, 

The fruitful and terrible goddess, 

Under a running panel of the sacred ibis, 

Is pictured the dead body of Osiris 

Waiting the resurrection morn. 

And a priest is pouring water blue as iris 

Out of a pitcher on the stalk of corn 

That from the body of the god is growing, 

Before the rising tides of the Nile are flowing. 

And over the pictured body is this inscription 

In the temple of Isis, the Egyptian: 

This is the nameless one, whom Isis decrees 

Not to be named, the god of life and yearning, 

Osiris of the mysteries, 

Who springs from the waters ever returning. 

At the gate of the Lord's house, 

Ezekiel, the prophet, beheld the abomination of Babylon: 

Women with sorrow on their brows 

In lamentation, weeping 

For the bereavement of Ishtar and for Tammuz sleeping, 

And for the summer gone. 

Tammuz has passed below 

To the house of darkness and woe, 

[13] 



STARVED ROCK 

Where dust lies on the bolt and on the floor 

Behind the winter's iron door; 

And Ishtar has followed him, 

Leaving the meadows gray, the orchards dim 

With driving rain and mist, 

And winds that mourn. 

Ishtar has vanished, and all life has ceased; 

No flower blossoms and no child is born. 

But not as Mary Magdalen came to the tomb, 

The women in the gardens of Adonis, 

Crying, " The winter sun is yet upon us," 

Planted in baskets seeds of various bloom, 

Which sprouted like frail hopes, then wilted down 

For the baskets' shallow soil. 

Then for a beauty dead, a futile toil, 

For leaves that withered, yellow and brown, 

From the gardens of Adonis into the sea, 

They cast the baskets of their hope away: 

A ritual of the things that cease to be, 

Brief loveliness and swift decay. 

And O ye holy women, who at Delphi 

Roused from sleep the cradled Dionysius, 

Who with an April eye 

Looked up at them, 

Before the adorable god, the infant Jesus, 

Was found at Bethlehem! 

For at Bethlehem the groaning world's desire 
For spring, that burned from Egypt up to Tyre, 

[14] 



THE WORLD'S DESIRE 

And from Tyre to Athens beheld an epiphany of fire : 

The flesh fade flower-like while the soul kept breath 

Beyond the body's death, 

Even as nature which revives; 

In consummation of the faith 

That Tammuz, the Soul, survives, 

And is not sacrificed 

In the darkness where the dust 

Lies on the bolt and on the floor, 

And passes not behind the iron door 

Save it be followed by the lover Christ, 

The Ishtar of the faithful trust, 

Who knocks and says : " This soul, which winter knew 

In life, in death at last, 

Finds spring through me, and waters fresh and blue. 

For lo, the winter is past; 

The rain is over and gone. 

I open! It is dawn! " 



[IS] 



TYRANNOSAURUS: OR BURNING 
LETTERS 

Trees of the forest ground to pulp, 

Rolled into sheets and rabbit tracked 

With nut-gall or with nigrosine — 

Then look at spirits thrill, or gulp 

A lost delight, a rising spleen 

For love that grew intense or slacked . . . 

Here are the letters, torn in bits, 
Crammed in the basket, look how full! 
Our little fireplace scarce admits 
So much that once was beautiful. 
Here where we sat and dreamed together 
In March, and now when we should be 
Friends in the glory of June weather, 
We tear our letters up — oh, me ! 
Call Jane to take the basket down, 
And throw these on the furnace fire. 
Let ashes drift about the town 
Of what was our desire! 

What are we to the gods, I wonder? 
Perhaps two crickets in the grass, 
Who meet and drop their stomachs' plunder 
To touch antennae as they pass. 
[16] 



TYRANNOSAURUS 

So kissing in such soul communion 
The gardener's step is heard, and quick 
The crickets break their spirits' union, 
Hide under logs or bits of brick. 
Does guilty conscience stir the crickets? 
What does he care? Why not a snap. 
He's trimming out the hazel thickets 
For a tennis court and shooting trap. . 
You are afraid of God! Not that? 
Some step has frightened you, I know. 
Well, then it's gossip the alley-cat. 
At least our hands grow cold as snow, 
Relax their touch, and then we come, 
Tear up the letters, sit and stare 
Some moments, wholly dumb ! 

If we are crickets, still our breasts 
Contain for us things real enough. 
The gods may laugh, their interests 
Are what? I wonder — not the love 
Such as we knew. To be a god 
Through love is what I hoped, and rise 
Above the level of the clod. 
They said it can't be, who are wise, 
That's not the way to win the prize: 
Or if it be, I don't know how; 
Or you are not the one with whom 
I might have won it. Well, my brow 
Is turned into a whitened tomb 
With all uncleanness in it; dreams 

[17] 



STARVED ROCK 

Rotting away with hopes as fair . . . 

To me, the liver, nothing seems 

Won that is lost. I can't invert, 

Sophisticate the facts, or swear 

My evil good. A hurt's a hurt, 

A loss a loss, a scar a scar, 

A spirit frustrate is inert. 

To stretch your hands toward a star 

And lose the star, or have it die 

To ashes like a rocket, alters 

The aspect of your being's sky. 

You've learned no praise from earthly psalters 

Can win the star, or else you've learned 

The star you touched was quickly turned 

To ashes while it burned. 

Hell! Let us face it. Here it is 
We had some walks, some precious talks, 
Some hours of paradise and bliss. 
Our blossom opened, we inhaled 
All of its fragrance, now I scowl 
Because our wonder blossom paled 
For lack of water in the bowl 
Tipped over by the alley-cat, 
Or what not, change, distrust or fear; 
Your pride, your will, a hovering gnat 
I struck at striking you, a blear 
Of eyes a moment, making blind 
My vision, yours. . . . Or there's the age, 
The age is frightful to my mind, 
[18] 



TYRANNOSAURUS 

Nothing to do but stand it — well 
I sit here and say " hell." 

For it's really hell to have a will, 
It's hell to hope and to believe, 
That good can swallow up the ill, 
That gods are working, will achieve. 
They may be, yet they disregard 
Our cricket feelings, so we shrill 
Sonnets and elegies round the yard . . . 
Let's talk a bit of chlorophyll: 
The sun was useless for our life, 
No wine, no beef, no watercress 
Until this chlorophyll grew rife 
Millions of years since, more or less. 
And if no wine or beef, no love, 
No pulp, no paper, nigrosine, 
No letters which are made thereof. 
Think! All we found and lost has been 
Through chlorophyll. 

And just suppose 
Nature should lose the secret power 
For making chlorophyll, the rose 
We cherished would not come to flower. 
No other man and woman more 
Would burn their letters grieving — yet 
We may be rising, for who knows 
There may be something vastly better 
Than love to flame and flay and fret, 

[19] 



STARVED ROCK 

And hate this letter and that letter, 
Once rid of chlorophyll, in case 
A subtler substance could be given 
To this poor globe out of heaven — 
We are a weak, if growing race! 

Here, then, I think is a moral for us, 

Another is tyrannosaurus — 

Tyrannosaurus, what of him, 

The monarch of this world one time, 

Back in the sons wet and dim? 

He faded like a pantomime. 

And he could, well, step over trees, 

Crunch up bowlders like cracking nuts, 

Flip horses away like bumble-bees, 

Stretch out in valleys as if they were ruts 

And hide a man in his nostril's hole, 

And crush young forestry just like weeds. 

He came and went, and what's your soul, 

And what is mine with their crying needs? 

And love that seemed eternal once, 

Given of God to lift, inspire, 

Well — now do we see ? Was I dunce 

Drunk with the wine of soul's desire? 

Who made that wine, why did I drink it? 

Why did I want it? What's the game? 

Are spirits chaos? I scarce can think it. 

Why fly for the light and get the flame? 

Is love for souls of us chlorophyll 

That makes us eatable, sweet and crisp 

[20] 



TYRANNOSAURUS 

For Gods that raise us to feed their fill? 

Who lives, the dreamer, the will o' the wisp? 

Do Gods live, vanish, return again? 

Who in the devil has love or luck? 

One thing is true, there's rapture and pain. 

As for the rest, I pass the buck. 

Something occurs, and God knows what, 

Tyrannosaurus fades like a ghost. 

That throws a light on our little lot, 

Love that is won, love that is lost. 

Even a hundred years from now, 

If this poor earth is rolling still, 

Hearts will quiver, break or bow — 

Provided the plants have chlorophyll. 

Oh well! Oh hell! We must be heroic, 

And it helps to scan a million of years. 

And to think of monstrous beasts mesoic, 

Brightens, though it dries no tears. 

I'll dream for life of our walks by the river — 

That was March and it's now July. 

And this remains: I'll love you forever — 

Burn up the letters now — Good by ! 



[21] 



LORD BYRON TO DOCTOR POLIDORI 

No more of searching, Doctor — let it go. 

It can't be lost. I have a memory 

I put it in a drawer, or again 

I seem to see me tuck it in a pocket 

Of some portmanteau. If you find the letter 

Deliver it to Moore. But if it's lost, 

The story is not lost. I tell you this 

To save the story from my side. Attend! 

It was this way: 

Allegra had become 
A child requiring care, and nutritive 
Instruction in religion, morals, well, 
They call me blasphemer and sensualist, 
But read my poems. Christianity 
Was never of rejected things with me. 
The Decalogue is good enough, I think. 
And Shelley's theories, atheist speculations 
I never shared — nor social dreams. The scheme 
Of having all things, women, too, in common 
Means common women. I have sinned, I know — 
I call it sin. The marriage vow I honor, 
And woman's virtue. Though I stray, I hold 
That women should be chaste, though man is not. 
That's why I placed Allegra in a convent. . . . 

[22] 



LORD BYRON TO DOCTOR POLIDORI 

Now to the letter, and my story of it. 

The mother, Claire, Claire Claremont, as you know — 

Pined for Allegra; would possess the child 

And take her from the convent — where ? No doubt 

To Shelley's nest, where William Godwin's daughter 

Raised on free love, and Shelley preaching it, 

And Claire in whom 'tis bred, hold sway, who read, 

Talk, argue, dream of freedom, all the things 

Opposed to what is in the present order. 

You know the notes to " Queen Mab." Well, I say 

This suits me not. 

So Shelley and his wife, 
Mary, the planet of an hour, since quenched, 
Conceive I keep Allegra where she is 
From wounded pride, or pique. Hell fire! They think 
I'm hurt for thinking Claire and Shelley join 
Their lips in love, and masque my jealousy 
By just this pose of morals, make reprisal 
Under a lying flag, and keep Allegra 
To punish Claire and sate my jealousy 
By this hypocrisy — It makes me laugh. 

But to pursue. A maid who was discharged 

From Shelley's household told the credible tale 

That Claire was Shelley's mistress, and the Hoppners 

Heard and believed — why not? As she is fair, 

And Shelley wrote " Love is like understanding 

Which brighter grows gazing on many truths, 

[23] 



STARVED ROCK 

Increases by division," that himself 

Could not accept the code, a man should choose 

One woman and leave all the rest, why not ? 

As for myself, I have not preached this doctrine, 

Though living it as men do in the world. . . . 

Oh yes, I know this love called spiritual, 

Of which old maids, whose milk has gone to brain 

And curdled in the process, and who hate me 

For taking men and women as they are, 

Talk to create belief for self and others. 

Denial makes philosophies, religions. 
Indulgence leaves one sane, objectifies 
The eternal womanly, freeing brain of fumes, 
To work with master hands with love and life. 

The story rose, however. 

Then comes Shelley 
Bearing a letter from his wife, denying 
That Claire and Shelley loved, you understand — 
By the flesh. Sweet, was it not ? Naive ! 
This letter I should hand the Hoppners, who 
Believed the story, and who held a place 
Persuasive touching poor Allegra. Well, 
So Shelley comes and makes the point, the child 
Is in ill health, Claire, too, in a decline, 
And hands this letter to me for the Hoppners. 
[24] 



LORD BYRON TO DOCTOR POLIDORI 

And I've misplaced it. Frankly, from the first, 

Had no fixed purpose to deliver it. 

What principle makes me collaborator 

With such fantastic business? To resume: 

He acted like the boy he was. I smiled — 

Against the flaming rage that burned his face — 

My mocking smile, he thought, the Don Juan 

Upcurved my lips. I read his very thought 

Between words spoken; words that he suppressed: 

It was that I was glad that Claire was ill 

Because of that male mood when love of man 

Finds sustenance where suffering lays low 

The object of desire: If she suffers, 

The man subdues, devours her. She escapes 

If free of love. Oh yes, and this he thought: 

That I was glad she suffered, since my glory 

Had failed to hold her, failed to satisfy 

Her noble heart! God's wounds! Why Shelley thought 

She turned to him and with his spirit found 

A purity of peace and sweetest friendship, 

And faith that saves and serves, as men and women 

Are to each other souls to serve and save! 

Poor fool! I read it all, or pieced it out 

With words that I picked up from time to time. . . . 

There was this further thing: I am a man, 
So say they, who accepts the dying creed 
That woman's love is lawless and a toy 
When given if no priest has sanctified it — 
Not quite, perhaps. The point is further on. 

[25] 



STARVED ROCK 

In any case 'tis this : that this belief, 
Mine or part mine, and coloring my acts, 
Shadowed no whit the brow of Lady Claire. 
And that I, greatest lover of my time, 
Had won this lady's body but to lose 
The lady's soul, a soul that slipped and fled 
Out of the hands that clasped her flesh, because 
She knew me through her gift, thought less of me, 
And no wise felt herself bound to my life 
Because she gave her body. Kept her mind, 
Soul, free, untouched by that gift, by the gift 
Was cognizant of what is false and poor — 
(I use some words I heard) in me. And thus 
I lost her soul, though earlier I had gained 
What seemed all to me, all I had the genius 
To comprehend in woman! Then comes Shelley 
And finds her soul, the genuine prize, and I 
Grow sullen with a consciousness of vision 
Inferior to his. All this they thought. 
Oh Jesus, what a lie! 



I have loved Nature, love her now: and woman 

Is Nature, and my love for nature means 

Inclusion of the sex. I have not soared 

To heights that sickened me and made me laugh 

At what I sought — or turned from it. No moons 

Behind the clouds ; no terrors and no symbols, 

No Emilia Vivianni's have I had. 

I know, believe me, love for woman calls 

[26] 



LORD BYRON TO DOCTOR POLIDORI 

A man's soul up to heights too rare to live in. 

I have not risen, therefore, will not rise 

Where thinking stops, because the blood leaves brain 

Therefore have had no falls, and no recoils 

Chasing the Plato vision, the star, the wonder, 

The beauty and the terror, harmony 

Of nature's art; the passion that would make 

The loved one of the self-same womb with me, 

A sister, spouse or angel, daemon, pilot 

Of life and fate. 

How much of truth is here? 

Dreams seen most vividly by Petrarch, Dante, 

Who loved without achievement, balking nature, 

Till Passion, like an involute, pressed in 

Harder and harder on its starving leaves, 

Becomes a fragrance — sublimate of self 

Sucked out of sorrow's earth, at last becomes 

A meditative madness. All is written 

Fairly across my page. " She walks in beauty: " 

" When we two parted," " Could love like a river," 

" Bright be the place of thy soul." Lines, lines 

In " Harold," " Don Juan." Yes, I have loved, 

But saw how far love lures, how far to venture, 

Knowing what can and what cannot be made 

Of the mystery, the wonder, therefore never 

Have had to laugh at self; find Vivianni 

A housemaid shelling corn — not threading pearls. 

[27] 



STARVED ROCK 

Or sit, with idiot eyes, my bones half broken, 
Icarus bumped amid a field of stones. 

I know the hour of farewell. I have said it 
When my heart trembled, stopped as when a horse 
Braces its terrored feet to keep from plunging 
Over the precipice. Farewell! Farewell! 
I know to say, and turn, and pass my way. 

Why! For that matter, even now behold! 

Do I feel less than Shelley would in this? 

I leave the Countess for the war in Greece. 

What's done is done. What's lived is lived. Come, 

Doctor, 
Let's practice with the pistols. Mother of God, 
What is this thing called Life? 



[28] 



THE FOLDING MIRROR 

A folding mirror! What may it be? 

Nothing? Or something? Let me see! 

Its silver chain is hung to the sky 

On a planet nail. And it fronts my eye. 

No stars reflect themselves at first, 

The mirrors are dustless, vacant and clean. 

Not even my face shows — am I cursed ? 

What may the mirrors mean? 

***** 

I watch like a cat that waits to mangle 
A breathless rat in an alley nook. 
And a little figure steps into the angle 
Made by the folding mirrors. Look! 
His thin legs wobble, bend and dangle 
Like radish roots. He takes the crook 
Out of his arms and raises them up, 
As if in panic, or supplication. 
He bends and peers, whines like a pup, 
Walks to and fro in his desperation, 
Pinches his arms and beats his breast; 
Runs quivering fingers between his hair, 
Wavers for weariness, sighs for rest, 
Looks up to the planet that seems to bear 
The silver chain like a brad in the wall. 
[29] 



STARVED ROCK 

Upsprings, searches the mirrors again; 

Sees for the first the prodigal 

Waste of stars in the black inane. 

Stamps with his feet upon the void 

He stands on, paces on, why, he wonders 

Is he upborned like an asteroid? 

Hark! The limitless blackness thunders: 

The Infinite growls, he whirls and shivers, 

Runs to cover the mirrors to climb. 

They yield like the waters of phantom rivers. 

He acts like a soul new born that quivers 

Before the mirrors of Space and Time. 



Now what's to do? He must fill in. 

This emptiness with horror is shod. 

When did this pageant of things begin? 

Somewhere hiding there is a God. 

Some one drove that planet nail 

Into the blue wall; some one hung 

The silver chain. And what is the tale 

Of the mirrors here in the blackness swung? 

The soul is naked, weak and alone, 

And sees its nakedness in the glass. 

It must create from wood and stone, 

Wire and reeds, color and brass. 

It must create though it be but a mime, 

Make a reality all its own 

Before the mirror of white called Time, 

Before the mirror of blue called Space. 

[30] 



THE FOLDING MIRROR 

Clasp the vastness between their folds, 
Find laws, raise altars, dream of a face — 
Make that real which the hope beholds. 

***** 

Our terrored manikin commences, 
Fattens his littleness with clothes. 
With crowns and miters puffs his senses, 
Crushes the grape to drown his woes. 
Fills full the mirrors with faces. Now 
They are dancing before them, age and youth, 
Laurels or thorns are bound on a brow. 
They hunt and slay for a thing called Truth. 
Dig for treasure, toil for riches, 
Struggle for place — it is well enough ! 
Some lift their busts into chosen niches. 
All are hungry for peace and love. 
And only a few are blind, dispute 
The thing is a dream. If there be worth 
It lies in the strings of the lyre or lute, 
Sounds that never return to earth; 
Dreams to seeing eyes reflected, 
Caught from infinite realms afar. 
How could they be seen, or recollected 
Except for the Real — except for a Star? 
***** 

God in the blackness, whirlwind, lightning, 
God in the blinding fire of the sun 
Before these empty mirrors brightening 
See what we do, what we have done! 

[31] 



STARVED ROCK 

Out of an astral substance molding 
Music and laws for our hearts' control, 
Yes, and a hope that the mirrors' folding 
Lets slip through a growing soul. 
Are you not proud of us, do you not pity? 
Is all the glory thine alone? 
Then if it be, you must take the city 
Builded, demolished stone from stone. 
All of our madness, weariness, error, 
Blindness, weakness, pain and loss, 
Fumbling feebly before the mirror, 
Yours is the crown, but yours the cross! 
Yours is the juice of grape or poppies 
To fill the void with a make believe; 
Yours the hope where never a prop is, 
The opiates, too, that dull, deceive, 
No less than nature that lifts eternal 
Vision of Life to quiet the heart: 
Verse and color that stamp the infernal 
Dragon of Fear with the feet of Art. 
Yours and ours the consolations 
In loneliness and in terror wrought 
Out of our spirits' desolations, 
Out of our spirits' love and thought! 



[3*3 



A WOMAN OF FORTY 

Eyes that have long looked on the world, 
Taken and stored the soul of outward things, 
Dread to look on themselves, 
In the mirror to gaze upon their mirrorings! 

There to behold what time has done, what thought 
Has changed their look and light. 
I have lost my face through sorrow and dreams 
And dare not find it, lest it smite 

This self to-day, since I may not restore 
My old self who in gladness without terror 
Beheld and knew myself 
Each morning in the mirror! 

In the long quest of love I may have found 

A spirit after whom my passion lusted. 

But I had trust not giving love, 

I have given love to hearts I have not trusted. 

One thing has come that I would never see, 
Hidden or trembling in my eyes: 
Love in the mirror shown fatigued and mild, 
Hopeless and wise. 

t33] 



WILD BIRDS 

The wild birds among the reeds 

Cry, exult and stretch their wings. 

Out of the sky they drift 

And sink to the water's rushes. 

But the wild birds beat their wings and cry 

To the newcomer out of the sky! 

Is he a stranger, this wild bird out of the sky? 

Or do they cry to him because of remembered places 

And remembered days 

Spent together 

In the north-land, or the south-land? 

Is this the ecstasy of renewal, 

Or the ecstasy of beginning? 

For the wild bird touches his bill 

Against a mate; 

He brushes her wing with his wing; 

He quivers with delight 

For the cool sky of blue, 

And the touch of her wing! 

The wild birds fly up from the reeds of the water, 
Some for the south, 

[34] 



WILD BIRDS 

Some for the north. 
They are gone — 
Lost in the sky! 

In what water do these mates of a morning 

Exult on the morrow? 

What wild birds will cry to them as they sink 

Out of an unknown sky? 

To whose cry will she quiver 

Through her burnished wings to-morrow, 

In the north-land, 

In the south-land, 

Far away? 



[35] 



A LADY 

She sleeps beneath a canopy of carnation silk, 

Embroidered with Venetian lace, 

Between linens that crush in the hand 

Soft as down. 

Waking, she looks through a window 

Curtained with carnation silk, 

Embroidered with Venetian lace, 

The walls are hung with velvet 

Embossed with a fleur de lis, 

And around her is the silence of richness, 

Where foot-falls are like exhalations 

From carpets of moss. 

Little clocks tinkle. 

Medallions priceless as jewels 

Lie by jars suspiring like coals of fire. 

And a maid prepares the bath, 

Tincturing delicious water with exquisite essences. 

And she is served with coffee 

In cups as thin as petals, 

Sitting amid pillows that breathe 

The souls of freesia! 

All things are hers: 
Fishes from all seas, 

[36] 



A LADY 

Fruits from all climes. 

The city lies at her command, 

And is summoned by buttons 

Which are pressed for her. 

Noiselessly feet move on many floors, 

Serving her. 

Wheels that turn under coaches 

Of crystal and ebony, 

And yachts dreaming in strange waters, 

And wings — all are hers ! 

And she is free: 

Her husband comes and goes 

From his suite below hers. 

She never sees him, 

Nor knows his ways, nor his days. 

But she is very weary 

And all alone amid her servants, 

And guests that come and go. 

Her lips are red, 

Her skin is soft and smooth — 

But the page blurs before her eyes. 

Her eyelids are languid, 

And droop from weariness, 

Though she will not rest 

From the long pursuit of love! 

Her hair is white; 

The skin of her faultless neck 

Edges in creases 

[37] 



STARVED ROCK 

As she turns her perfect head. 

And the days dawn and die. 

What day that dawns will bring her love ? 

And day by day she waits for the dawn 

Of a new life, a great love! 

But every morning brings its remembrance 

Of the increasing years that are gone. 

And every evening brings its fear 

Of death which must come, 

Until her nerves are shaken 

Like a woman's hair in the wind — 

What must be done? 

Some one tells her that God is love. 

And when the fears come 

She says to self over and over, 

"God is love! God is love! 

All is well." 

And she wins a little oblivion, 

Through saying " God is love," 

From the truth in her heart which cries: 

" Love is life, 

Love is a lover, 

And love is God!" 

She is a flower 

Which the spring has nourished, 

And the summer exhausted. 

Fall is at hand. 

Weird zephyrs stir her leaves and blossoms; 

[38] 



A LADY 

And she says to herself, " It is not fall, 
For God is love ! " 

My poor flower! 

May this therapy ease you into sleep, 

And the folding of jewelless hands! 

You are beginning to be sick 

Of the incurable disease of age, 

And the weariness of futile flesh! 



[39] 



THE NEGRO WARD 

Scarce had I written: it were best 
To crush this love, to give you up, 
Drink at one draught the bitter cup, 
And kill this new life in my breast, 
Than Parker's breathing seemed to give 
Ominous sound the end was near. 
I did so want this man to live — 
This negro soldier, dear. 

'Twas three in the morning, all was still 

But Parker's rattle in the throat, 

Outside I heard the whippoorwill. 

The new moon like an Indian boat 

Hung just above the darkened grove, 

Where you and I had pledged our love, 

When you were here. Such precious hours, 

Such fleeting moments then were ours . . . 

Alone here in the silent ward, 

With Parker dying, I was scared. 

His breath came short, his lips were blue. 

I asked him: " Is there something more, 

Parker, that I can do for you?" 

" Please hold my hand," he said. Before 

I took it, it was growing cold — 

Death, how quick it comes! 

Uo] 



THE NEGRO WARD 

Then next I seemed to hear the drums — 

For I had fainted for his eyes 

That stared with such a wide surprise, 

As the lids fell apart they stared, 

As if they saw what to behold 

Had startled his poor soul which fared 

Where it would not. I heard the drums, 

The bugle next, lay there so faint 

With Parker's eyes still in my view, 

Like bubble motes which flit and paint 

Themselves upon the heaven's blue. 

An orderly had mailed meanwhile 

That letter, to you, there I lay 

Too weak to write again, unsay 

What I had written. 

Down the aisle, 
Between our beds a step I heard, 
A voice : " Our order's here, we leave 
In half an hour for France." I stirred 
Like a dead thing, could scarce conceive 
What tragedy was come. No chance 
To write you or to telegraph. 
In twelve hours more, as in a trance 
I looked from Ellis Island, where 
My chums could gayly talk and laugh. 
In two hours more we sailed for France. 
All this was hard, but still to bear 
The knowledge of you, your despair, 

[41] 



STARVED ROCK 

Or change, or bitterness, if you thought 
That letter came from me, was wrought 
Out of a heart that could not stake 
Its own blood for your sake. 

I will come back to you at length 
If I but live and have the strength. 
How will you like me with hair white, 
And wasted cheeks, deep lined and pale? 
It all began that dreadful night 
Of Parker's death, the strain and fright, 
The letter it seemed best to write — 
From then to now I have been frail. 
Our ship just missed a submarine, 
And here the hardships, gas-gangrene, 
The horrors and the deaths have stripped 
My life of everything. Is it to prove 
For duty, you, though bloody-lipped, 
And fallen my unconquerable love 
For country and for you through all, 
Whatever fate befall? 

What is my soul's great anguish for? 
For what this tragedy of war? 
For what the fate that says to us: 
Part hands and be magnanimous? 
For what the judgment which decrees 
The mother love in me to cease? 
For separation, hopeless miles 
Of land and water us between? 

[42] 



THE NEGRO WARD 

For what the devil force that smiles 
At man's immedicable pain? 

I have not lost my faith in God. 
Life has grown dark, I only say: 
Dear God, my feet have lost the way. 
Religion, wisdom do not give 
A place to stand, a space to live. 
I have not lost my faith in love, 
That somehow it must rise above 
The clouds of earth, I still can rest 
In dreams sometimes upon your breast. 
But, oh, it seems sometimes a play 
Where gods are picking a bouquet: 
The blossom of war, my soul or yours 
More fragrant grown as it endures. . . 



[43] 



WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE 

Homer saw nations, armies, multitudes — 
You saw them in the intimate interludes 
Of Brutus' soul at midnight in a tent 
When the infection festers the event. 
Ulysses' course is changed by the sea's trough. 
You saw an epoch when a hat blows off. 
Orestes fled the Furies, won his peace 
Through Apollo in old Greece. 
But who unbars the mouse traps of your world. 
Or kills the ambushed serpent where it's curled? 
Your Fates return, and Fortinbras draws in 
On Hamlet's impotence and Gertrude's sin. 
All oceans in a raindrop, drops of dew 
Containing perfect heavens starred and blue; 
Angels who mother Calibans, and hopes 
Are of your vision — great mosaics hued 
With thoughts of princes, poets, misanthropes, 
Reveal their minute colors closer viewed. 
Atomies, maggots, worms or gilded flies, 
Nothing too small or foul is for your eyes. 
You made a culture of dreams lost or won 
Like Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson. 
You looked in heaven when the lightning shone, 
Then saw a fairy's whip of cricket bone. 
For gods and men bacteriologist 

[44] 



WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE 

Of spiritual microbes hidden which subsist 

In moments of red joy — calm satirist 

Of worlds forsaken for a woman's hair, 

Kings slain, states crumbled, heroes false or fair, 

The madness of the flesh, love on the wrack, 

A white maid married to a soldier black. 

Incests, adulteries and secret sins, 

The fall of monarchs and of manikins. 

All men at last a rattling empty pod, 

All men destroyed like flies for sport of God. 

All Life at last an idiot's furious tale — 

You had the strength to say this and not quail ! 

For you what were the unities, the rules 

Of Plautus, Corneille or the Grecian schools? 

Flame through a pipe will sing, perhaps, when blown 

Against the craftsman's silver, but the tone 

Of worlds in conflagration, that's to be 

The sacred fire with wings outspread and free, 

Wherein an Athens falls, a Sidon stands, 

And where a freezing clown may warm his hands. 

If you could empty out a tiger's brain 

And wire up its spinal cord again 

To Sappho's brain, it would no doubt devour 

The tiger's nerves and sinews in an hour. 

Such muscles and such bones could not endure 

The avid hunger of a fire so pure. 

And you, Will Shakspeare, spirit sensitive, 

You lived past fifty, that is long to live 

And feed a flame like yours, and let the flame 

[45] 



STARVED ROCK 

Remake itself and lap at flesh and frame. 

I say with Jesus, wisdom's eyes are blind 

To seek a poet out and think to find 

A slender reed that's shaken by the wind. 

Come cyclops of the counter, millionaires, 

Lawyers and statesmen in the world's affairs, 

And thin away like flesh which acid eats 

Under the passion even of John Keats. 

But if you felt and saw love, agony, 

As Shakspeare knew them you would quickly die. 

There is no tragedy like the gift of song, 

It keeps you mortal but demands you strong; 

It gives you God's eyes blurred with human tears, 

And crowns a thousand lives in fifty years. 

Enter the breathless silence where God dwells, 

See and record all heavens and all hells! 



[46] 



FOR A PLAY 

Love began with both of them so gently 
Meeting, neither thought nor looked intently. 
Afterward her breath invoked the fire — 
Breath to breath set burning their desire. 

Is there aught in flesh or is it spirit 
Conscious of its kindred soul when near it? 
Woe to flesh or soul that's wholly wakened 
While the other's soul-depths lie unshakened! 

How could she give him all sacred blisses, 
Long embraces, in the darkness kisses, 
If she was not his, all else forgetting, 
Lovers gone and other loves' regretting? 

That was just the place her gold was leadened • 
Flesh there too alive, to him all deadened. 
She could harp not to his playing wholly, 
Yet his heart strings trembled for her solely. 

So this love play hastened to the curtain. 
Each one spoke his lines in accents certain, 
While at times behind the wings her glances 
Warmed the prompter's treasonous advances. 

[47] 



STARVED ROCK 

Is there greater martydom than this is? 
You have staked your soul where the abyss is. 
You have given all — oh sorry barter 
You have lit the fire for you the martyr. 

You will still love on, or turn to hating, 

Days depart, your heart stays in its waiting, 

Where's the blame? She gave her heart's half measure, 

All she had, for all your soul's full treasure. 

What's the half to keep, could you achieve it? 
What your treasure if you could retrieve it? 
Never more shall you again bestow it . . . 
Now you have a song if you're a poet. 

Now you're ever dumb if song's denied you, 
You shall be more dumb than all beside you, 
While your soul is shaken by its torrents — 
Dante songless in a Dante Florence. 

Age shall not make strong, nor deeper learning. 
Grief grows clearer with your eye's discerning. 
Pass the years, but oh the soil grows faster — 
Richer for the roots of your disaster. 

Ends the play — for what is life but dying? 
What is love but fire forever crying? 
What your soul but love's pure carbon fuel? 
Love and life make ashes of the jewel! 

[48] 



CHICAGO 

i 

On the gray paper of this mist and fog 

With dust for the erasure and with smoke 

For drawing crayons, be this charcoal scrawl: 

The breed of Gog in the kingdom of Magog, 

Skyscrapers, helmeted, stand sentinel 

Amid the obscuring fumes of coal and coke, 

Raised by enchantment out of the sand and bog. 

This sky-line, the Sierras of the lake, 

Cuts with dulled teeth, 

Which twist and break, 

The imponderable and drifting steam. 

And restlessly beneath 

This man-created mountain chain, 

Like the flow of a prairie river 

Endlessly by day and night, forever 

Along the boulevards pedestrians stream 

In a shuffle like dancers to a low refrain: 

Forever by day and night 

Pursuing as of old the lure of delight, 

And the ghosts of pleasure or pain. 

Their rhythmic feet sound like the falling of rain, 

Or the hush of the waves, when the roar 

Is blown by a wind off shore. 

[49] 



STARVED ROCK 

ii 

From a tower like a mountain promontory 
The cesspool of a railroad lies to view- 
Fouling the marble of the city's glory: 
A crapulous sluice of garbage and of cars 
Where engines rush and whistle, smudge the blue 
With filth like the trail of slugs. 
It is a trench of steel which bars 
Free access to the common shore, and hugs 
In a coil of lazar arms the boulevard. 
Cattle and hogs delivered here for slaughter 
Corrupt the loveliness of the water front. 
They low and grunt, 

Switched back and forth within the tangled yard. 
But from this tower the amethystine water, 
The water of jade or slate, 
Is visible with its importunate 
Gestures against the sky to still retreats 
In Michigan, of quiet woods and hills 
Beyond the simmering passion of these streets, 
And all their endless ills. . . . 



in 

But over the switch yard stands the Institute 
Guarded by lions on the avenue, 
Colossal lions standing for attack; 
Between whose feet luminous and resolute 
Children of the city passing through 

[50] 



CHICAGO 

To palettes, compasses, the demoniac 

Spirit of the city shall subdue. 

Lions are in the loop and jackals too. 

They have no trainers but the alderman, 

Who uses them to hunt with, but in time 

The city shall behold its nobler plan 

Achieved by hands that rhyme, 

Workers who architect and build, 

And out of thought its substance re-arrange, 

Till all its prophecies shall be fulfilled. 

Through numbers, science and art 

The city shall know change, 

And win dominion over water and light, 

The cyclop's mastery of the mart; 

The devils overcome, 

Which stalk the squalid ways by night 

Of poverty and the slum, 

Where the crook is spawned, the burglar and the bum. 

These youths who pass the lions shall assuage 

The city's thirst and hunger, 

And save it from the wastage and the wage 

Of the demagogue, the precinct monger. 



IV 

This is the city of great doges hidden 
In guarded offices and country places. 
The city strives against the things forbidden 
By the doges, on whose faces 
The city at large never looks; 

[51] 



STARVED ROCK 

Doges who could accomplish if they would 

In a month the city's beauty and good. 

Yet this city in a hundred years has risen 

Out of a haunt of foxes, wolves and rooks, 

And breaks asunder now the bars of the prison 

Of dead days and dying. It has spread 

For many a rood its boundaries, like the sprawled 

And fallen Hephaestos, and has tenanted 

Its neighborhoods increasing and unwalled 

With peoples from all lands. 

From Milwaukee Avenue to the populous mills 

Of South Chicago, from the Sheridan Drive 

Through forests where the water smiles 

To Harlem for miles and miles. 

It reaches out its hands, 

Powerful and alive 

With dreams to touch tomorrow, which it wills 

To dawn and which shall dawn. . . . 

And like lights that twinkle through the stench 

And putrid mist of abattoirs, 

Great souls are here, separate and withdrawn, 

Companionless, whom darkness cannot quench. 

Seeing they are the chrysalis which must feed 

Upon its own thoughts and the life to be, 

Its flight among the stars. 

Beauty is here, like half protected flowers, 

Blooms and will cast its multiplying seed, 

Until one mass of color shall succeed 

The shaley places of these arid hours. 

[52] 



CHICAGO 



Chicago! by this inland sea 

In the land of Lincoln, in the state 

Of souls who held the nation's fate, 

City both old and young, I consecrate 

Your future years to truth and liberty. 

Be this the record frail and incomplete 

Of one who saw you, mingled with the masses 

Along these magical mountain passes 

With restless yet with hopeful feet. 

Could they return to see you who have slept 

These fifty years, who laid your first foundations! 

And oh! could we behold you who have kept 

Their promises for you, when new generations 

Shall walk this boulevard made fair 

In chiseled marble, looking at the lake 

Of clearer water under a bluer air. 

We who shall sleep then nor awake, 

Have left the labor to you and the care 

Ask great fulfillment, for ourselves a prayer! 



[53] 



THE WEDDING FEAST 

Said the chief of the marriage feast to the groom, 

Whence is this blood of the vine? 
Men serve at first the best, he said, 

And at the last, poor wine. 

Said the chief of the marriage feast to the groom, 
When the guests have drunk their fill 

They drink whatever wine you serve, 
Nor know the good from the ill. 

How have you kept the good till now 

When our hearts nor care nor see? 
Said the chief of the marriage feast to the groom, 

Whence may this good wine be? 

Said the chief of the marriage feast, this wine 

Is the best of all by far. 
Said the groom, there stand six jars without 

And the wine fills up each jar. 

Said the chief of the marriage feast, we lacked 

Wine for the wedding feast. 
How comes it now one jar of wine 

To six jars is increased? 

[54] 



THE WEDDING FEAST 

Who makes our cup to overflow ? 

And who has the wedding blest? 
Said the groom to the chief of the feast, a stranger 

Is here as a wedding guest. 

Said the groom to the chief of the wedding feast, 

Moses by power divine 
Smote water at Meribah from the rock, 

But this man makes us wine. 

Said the groom to the chief of the wedding feast, 

Elisha by power divine 
Made oil for the widow to sell for bread, 

But this man, wedding wine. 

He changed the use of the jars, he said, 

From an outward rite and sign: 
Where water stood for the washing of feet, 

For heart's delight there's wine. 

So then 'tis he, said the chief of the feast, 

Who the wedding feast has blest ? 
Said the groom to the chief of the feast, the stranger 

Is the merriest wedding guest. 

He laughs and jests with the wedding guests, 

He drinks with the happy bride. 
Said the chief of the wedding feast to the groom, 

Go bring him to my side. 

[55] 



STARVED ROCK 

Jesus of Nazareth came up, 

And his body was fair and slim. 

Jesus of Nazareth came up, 

And his mother came with him. 

Jesus of Nazareth stands with the dancers 

And his mother by him stands. 
The bride kneels down to Jesus of Nazareth 

And kisses his rosy hands. 

The bridegroom kneels to Jesus of Nazareth 

And Jesus blesses the twain. 
I go a way, said Jesus of Nazareth, 

Of darkness, sorrow and pain. 

After the wedding feast is labor, 

Suffering, sickness, death, 
And so I make you wine for the wedding, 

Said Jesus of Nazareth. 

My heart is with you, said Jesus of Nazareth, 
As the grape is one with the vine. 

Your bliss is mine, said Jesus of Nazareth, 
And so I make you wine. 

Youth and love I bless, said Jesus, 

Song and the cup that cheers. 
The rosy hands of Jesus of Nazareth 

Are wet with the young bride's tears. 

[56] 



THE WEDDING FEAST 

Love one another, said Jesus of Nazareth, 

Ere cometh the evil of years. 
The rosy hands of Jesus of Nazareth 

Are wet with the bridegroom's tears. 

Jesus of Nazareth goes with his mother, 

The dancers are dancing again. 
There's a woman who pauses without to listen, 

'Tis Mary Magdalen. 

Forth to the street a Scribe from the wedding 

Goes with a Sadducee. 
Said the Scribe, this shows how loose a fellow 

Can come out of Galilee! 



[57] 



BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON 

By the waters of Babylon by the sea, 
On the sand where the waters died, 
The sea wind and the tide 
Drowned the words you spoke to me. 

The sea fell at our feet. The sand 
Hushed the whispering waters, near 
The babble of boats by the pier 
Was the ictus to the roar on the strand. 

By the waters of Babylon a grief to be, 
The waiting ships in the bay, 
Awed the words we would say 
Against the sound of the sea: 

*> 

For France was below the waters, and the west 
Behind me where the rains 
Come in November on the window panes, 
And the blast shakes the ruined nest 

Under the dripping eaves. What then remains 
But memory of the waters of Babylon, 
And the ships like swan after swan, 
Under the drone of angry hydroplanes ? 

[58] 



BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON 

By the waters of Babylon we did not weep, 
Though love comes and is gone, 
As the wind is, as waters drawn 
In spray from the deep. 

Neither for things foreseen and ominous, 
For newer hands that somewhere wait 
To thrill afresh, the reblossomed fate 
Did we surrender dolorous. . . . 

Change now is yours beyond the waters, nights 
Of waiting and of doubt have dimmed desire. 
Our hands are calm before the dying fire 
Of lost delights. 

Babylon by the sea knows us no more. 
Between the surge's hushes 
When on the sand the water rushes 
There is no voice of ours upon the shore. 



[59] 



THE DREAM OF TASSO 

O Earth that walls these prison bars — O Stones 

Which shut my body in — could I be free 

If these fell and the grated door which groans 

For every back scourged hither oped for me? 

Freedom were what to travel you, O Earth, 

When my heart makes its daily agony? 

And longing such as mine cannot ungirth 

Its bands and its mortality o'erleap. 

Our life is love unsatisfied from birth, 

Our life is longing waking or asleep, 

And mine has been a vigil of quick pain. 

Leonora, thus it is I keep 

Grief in my heart and weariness of brain. 

How did I know these chains and bars are wrought 
Of frailer stuff than space, that I could gain 
In earth no respite, but a vision brought 
The truth, O Leonora? It was this: 

1 dreamed this hopeless love, so long distraught 
Was never caged, but from the first was bliss, 
And moved like music from the meeting hour 
To the rapt moment of the earliest kiss 
Bestowed upon your hands, to gathering flower 
Of lips so purely yielded, the embrace 
Tender as dawn in April when a shower 

[60] 



THE DREAM OF TASSO 

Quenches with gentleness each flowering place; 
So were your tears of gladness — so my hands 
Which stroked your golden hair, your sunny face, 
Even as flying clouds o'er mountain lands 
Caress with fleeting love the morning sun. 

Now I was with you, and by your commands. 
Your love was mine at last completely won, 
And waited but the blossom. How you sang, 
Laughed, ran about your palace rooms and none 
Closed doors against me, desks and closets sprang 
To my touch open, all your secrets lay 
Revealed to me in gladness — and this pang 
Which I had borne in bitterness day by day 
Was gone, nor could I bring it back, or think 
How it had been, or why — this heart so gay 
In sudden sunshine could no longer link 
Itself with what it was. 

Look! Every room 
Had blooms your hands had gathered white and pink, 
And drained from precious vases their perfume. 
And fruits were heaped for me in golden bowls, 
And tapestries from many an Asian loom 
Were hung for me, and our united souls 
Shone over treasure books — how glad you were 
To listen to my epic, from the scrolls 
Of Jerusalem, the holy sepulcher. 
Still as a shaft of light you sat and heard 
With veiled eyes which tears could scarcely blur, 

[61] 



STARVED ROCK 

But flowed upon your cheek with every word. 

And your hand reached for mine — you did not speak, 

But let your silence tell how you were stirred 

By love for me and wonder ! What to seek 

In earth and heaven more? Heaven at last 

Was mine on earth, and for a sacred week 

This heaven all of heaven. 

So it passed 
This week with you — you served me ancient wine. 
We sat across a table where you cast 
A cloth of chikku, or we went to dine 
There in the stately room of heavy plate. 
Or tiring of the rooms, the day's decline 
Beheld us by the river to await 
The evening planet, where in elfin mood 
You whistled like the robin to its mate, 
And won its answering call. Then through the wood 
We wandered back in silence hand in hand, 
And reached the sacred portal with our blood 
Running so swift no ripples stirred the sand 
To figures of reflection. 

Once again 
Within your room of books, upon the stand 
The reading lights are brought to us, and then 
You read to me from Plato, and my heart 
Breathes like a bird at rest; the world of men, 
Strife, hate, are all forgotten in this art 
Of life made perfect. Or when weariness 

[62] 



THE DREAM OF TASSO 

Comes over us, you dim the lamp and start 
The blue light back of Dante's bust to bless 
Our twilight with its beauty. 

So the time 
Passes too quickly — our poor souls possess 
Beauty and love a moment — and our rhyme 
Which captures it, creates the illusion love 
Has permanence, when even at its prime 
Decay has taken it from the light above, 
Or darkness underneath. 

I must recur 
To our first sleep and all the bliss thereof. 
How did you first come to me, how confer 
On me your beauty? That first night it was 
The blue light back of Dante, but a blur 
Of golden light our spirits, when you pass 
Your hand across my brow, our souls go out 
To meet each other, leave as wilted grass 
Our emptied bodies. Then we grow devout, 
And kneel and pray together for the gift 
Of love from heaven, and to banish doubt 
Of change or faithlessness. Then with a swift 
Arising from the prayer you disappear. 
I sleep meanwhile, you come again and lift 
My head against your bosom, bringing near 
A purple robe for me, and say, " Wear this, 
And to your chamber go." And thus I hear, 
And leave you; on my couch, where calm for bliss 

[63] 



STARVED ROCK 

I wait for you and listen, hear your feet 

Whisper their secret to the tapestries 

Of your ecstatic coming — O my sweet ! 

I touched your silken gown, where underneath 

Your glowing flesh was dreaming, made complete 

My rapture by upgathering, quick of breath, 

Your golden ringlets loosened — and at last 

Hold you in love's embrace — would it were Death ! . 

For soon 'twixt love and sleep the night was past, 

And dawn cob-webbed the chamber. Then I heard 

One faintest note and all was still — the vast 

Spherule of heaven was pecked at by a bird 

As it were to break the sky's shell, let the light 

Of morning flood the fragments scattered, stirred 

By breezes of the dawn with passing night. 

We woke together, heard together, thrilled 

With speechless rapture! Were your spirit's plight 

As mine is with this vision, had I willed 

To torture you with absence? Would I save 

Your spirit if its anguish could be stilled 

Only among the worms that haunt the grave? 

My dream goes on a little: Day by day, 

These seven days we lived together, gave 

Our spirits to each other. With dismay 

You watched my hour's departure. On you crept 

Light shadows after moments sunny, gay. 

But when the hour was come, you sat and wept, 

And said to me: " I hear the rattling clods 

Upon the coffin of our love." You stepped 

[6 4 ] 



THE DREAM OF TASSO 

And stood beside the casement, said " A god's 

Sarcophagus this room will be as soon 

As you have gone, and mine shall be the rod's 

Bitterness of memory both night and noon 

Amid the silence of this palace." So 

I spoke and said, " If you would have the boon — 

Leonora, do I live to know 

This hope too passionate made consummate? — 

Yet if it be I shall return, nor go 

But to return to you, and make our fate 

Bound fast for life." How happy was your smile, 

Your laughter soon, — and then from door to gate 

1 passed and left you, to be gone awhile 
Around Ferrara. 

In three days, it seemed, 
I came again, and as I walked each mile 
Counting to self — my feet lagged as I dreamed — 
And said ten miles, nine miles, eight miles, at last 
One mile, so many furlongs, then I dreamed 
Your reading lamps were lighted for me, cast 
Their yellow beams upon the mid-night air. 
But oh my heart which stopped and stood aghast 
To see the lamp go out and note the glare 
Of blue light set behind the Dante mask! 
Who wore my robe of purple false and fair? 
Who drank your precious vintage from the flask 
Roman and golden whence I drank so late? 
Who held you in his arms and thus could ask? 
Receive your love ? Mother of God ! What fate 
[65] 



STARVED ROCK 

Was mine beneath the darkness of that sky, 
There at your door who could not leave or wait, 
And heard the bird of midnight's desolate cry? 
And saw at last the blue light quenched, and saw 
A taper lighted in my chamber — why 
This treachery, Leonora? Why withdraw 
The love you gave, or eviler, lead me here, 

sorceress, before whom heaven's law 
Breaks and is impotent — whose eyes no tear 
Of penitence shall know, whose spirit fares 
Free, without consequence, as a child could sear 
Its fellow's hands with flame, or unawares, 

Or with premeditation, and then laugh and turn 
Upon its play. For you, light heart, no snares 
Or traps of conscience wait, who thus could spurn 
A love invited. 

Thus about your lawn 

1 listened till the stars had ceased to burn, 
But when I saw the imminence of the dawn 
And heard our bird cry, I could stand no more, 
My heart broke and I fled and wandered on 
Down through the valley by the river's shore. 
For when the bird cried, did you wake with him? 
Did you two gaze as we had gazed before 
Upon that blissful morning? I was dim 

Of thought and spirit, by the river lay 
Watching the swallows over the water skim, 
And plucking leaves from weeds to turn or stay 
The madness of my life's futility, 

[66] 



THE DREAM OF TASSO 

Grown blank as that terrific dawn — till day 
Flooded upon me, noon came, what should be? 
Where should I go? What prison chains could rest 
So heavily on the spirit, as that free, 
But vast and ruined world? 

O arrowed breast 
Of me, your Tasso! And you came and drew 
The arrows out which kept the blood repressed, 
And let my wounds the freer bleed: 'Twas you 
By afternoon who walked upon an arm 
More lordly than mine is. You stopped nor knew, 
I saw him take your body lithe and warm 
Close to his breast, yes, even where we had stood 
Upon our day, embraced — feed on the charm 
Of widened eyes and swiftly coursing blood. 
I watched you walk away and disappear 
In the deep verdure of the river wood, 
Too faint to rise and fly, crushed by the fear 
Of madness, sudden death! 

This was my dream, 
From which I woke and saw again the sheer 
Walls of my prison, which no longer seem 
The agony they did, even though the cell 
Is the hard penalty and the cursed extreme 
Hate in return for love. But oh you hell, 
You boundless earth to wander in and brood — 
Great prison house of grief in which to dwell, 
Remembering love forgotten, pride subdued, 

[67] 



STARVED ROCK 

And love desired and' found and lost again. 
That is the prison which no fortitude 
Can suffer, and the never dying pain 
From which the spacious luring of the earth 
Tempts flight for spirit freedom, but in vain! 

Ah Leonora! Even from our birth 

We build our prisons! What are walls like these 

Beside the walls of memory, or the dearth 

Of hope in all this life, the agonies 

Of spiritual chains and gloom? I suffer less, 

Imprisoned thus, than if the memories 

Of love bestowed and love betrayed should press 

Round my unresting steps. And I send up 

To heaven thanks that spared that bitterness, 

That garden of the soul's reluctant cup! 



[68] 



THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 

He hears his father pray when he's a boy: 
" Jesus we know, the Savior, and we ask, 
In Thy great plenitude of mercy, grace, 
Forgiveness for our waywardness ; we invoke 
Thy blessing, and may righteousness and peace 
Prevail in all the earth. Meekly we rest 
Upon the precious promise of Thy word. 
Gather us home with Thine own people, Lord, 
And all the glory shall be Thine." 

So much 
To show the father's prayer which he heard. 
The father is a saint, a quietist, 
Save that he has his hatreds, strong enough: 
Turns face of stone and silence to the men 
Whose ways of life are laid in sin, he thinks 
And calls them dirty dogs and scalawags, 
Because they vote a ticket he dislikes, 
Or love a game of cards, a glass of beer, 
Or go to see the County Fair, where once 
A drunken bus-man drives upon a boy 
And kills him. Then the saint is all aflame, 
And tries to have the fair put out for good. 

[69] 



STARVED ROCK 

And so the son, who will become at last 

The Christian Statesman, hears his father pray, 

And prays himself, and takes the lesson in 

Of godliness, the Bible as the source 

Of truth infallible, divine. 

This boy 
Is blessed with health, a body without flaw, 
His forehead is a little low, perhaps, 
And has a transverse dent which keeps the brain 
Shaped to the skull; a perfect brain is sphered, 
As perfect things are circles; but a brain 
Something below perfection, which is fed 
By a great body and an obdurate will, 
And sense of moral purpose will go far, 
Farther than better brains in craft of states, 
For some years anyway, if a voice be given 
Which reaches to the largest crowded room, 
To speak the passionate moralities 
Which come into that brain creased straight across 
The forehead with a dent. 

He goes to school, 
And from the first believes he has a mission 
To make the world a better place, avows 
His mission in the world, bends all his strength 
To make his armor ready: health of body, 
A blameless life, hard studies, practices 
With word and voice. 

[70] 



THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 

It is a country college 
Where he matriculates — the father wished it; 
A college where the boys are mostly poor, 
And waste no time, have not the cash to buy 
Delight, if they desired. 

He ruminates 
Upon the pebbles and Demosthenes, 
And sets his will to be an orator 
That he may herald truth and save the world. 
After much toil, re-writing, he delivers 
A speech he calls, " Ich Dien," and loses out 
Against a youth who speaks on Liberty. 
And then he uses Gladstone for his theme, 
The Christian Statesman; for exordium 
Tells of the ermine which will die before 
It suffers soilure — that was Gladstone — yes! 
But still he cannot win the prize; a boy 
Who talks about the labors of Charles Darwin, 
His suffering and sacrifice, is awarded 
The prize this time — a boy who had the wit 
To speak in praise of Darwin's virtues — saying 
Nothing about his hellish doctrines, thus 
Winning the cautious judges to his theme. 

But is our little Gladstone crushed, dismayed? 
He plucks up further strength and takes a hint: 
A larger subject may bring down the prize. 
He thinks of Thomas Jefferson — but then 
Jefferson was a deist, took the Bible 

[71] 



STARVED ROCK 

And cut out everything but Jesus' words. 
" Yet I can speak on what was good in him, 
His work for liberty, the Declaration, 
And close ray eyes to all his heterodoxy." 
Then something of this plan crept like a snake 
Into his brain, he petted it with hands: 
Be ye as wise as serpents, and as doves 
Harmless, he smiled — and went to work again, 
And won the prize. 

And now he has stepped forth 
Into the world's arena to become 
A Savior, an evangel, as he thinks, 
In truth a pest. He runs for Congress first 
And when his manager takes out a check 
And shows him, given by the local brewery, 
Another check a bank gives, he maintains 
A smiling silence, thinking to himself, 
Jesus accepted gifts from publicans, 
And if I am elected then this money, 
However dirty, will be purified 
By what I do. 

But then he was defeated. 
He thinks the banks and breweries did the trick. 
In truth they knew the Christian Statesman, knew 
The oleaginous smile and silver voice 
Concealed the despot. Did he scourge them then? 
Well, scarcely then — he wrote a public letter 
And said the people had decided it. 

[72] 



THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 

And what the people said was law. He nerved 
His purpose for another trial — that body 
So big and flawless could not be exhausted — 
That voice still carried to the farthest corner, 
That oily smile deceived the multitude 
That he was hurt, embittered, only waited 
To see if body, voice and oily smile 
Could win by any means; if not, the scourge 
Would be brought forth, the smile dropped, the com- 
plaints 
Against the breweries, what not, opened up, 
Unmasked. For when your hope is gone, you're free 
To scold and tell your bitterness. 

And then 
He made a third and last attempt, though edging 
Toward the sophistry that moral questions 
Make those political, and by this means 
Trying to win the churches. Still he stuck 
To matters economic, as before 
Took what the breweries gave to help his cause, 
His campaign fund. By this time many more 
Had found him out, and knew him for a voice 
And tireless body nourishing a brain 
As mediocre as the world contained, 
And only making louder noise because 
Of body strong and voice mellifluous. 
They put him down for good; the Christian Statesman 
Had cause to think he was no statesman, or 
No Christian, or the electorate not Christian. 
[73] 



STARVED ROCK 

And so he took the mask off, dropped the smile, 
And let his mouth set like a concrete crack 
And went about to punish men, while seeming 
To save the world. 

Out of that indentation, 
That fosse of mediocrity, came up 
A crocodile with wagging tail upreared, 
And smile toothed to the gullet — it was this: 
Questions political are moral questions, 
And moral questions are political, 
And terms convertible are equipollent, 
And wholly true. Therefore, I rise to preach 
To moral America, draw audiences 
In churches, of the churches. If I win 
Majorities upon — no matter what — 
A law will blossom; as all moral questions 
Are equally political, procure 
For their adoption the majority. 
Upon this fortress I can stand and shoot — 
Who can attack me, since I seek for self 
Nothing, but for my country righteousness? 
And as an instrument of God I punish 
My enemies as well. 

Who are my enemies? 
The intelligencia, as they call themselves, 
Who flaunt the Bible wholly or in part, 
Or try to say that Darwin's evolution 
Honors the Deity more than Genesis. 

[74] 



THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 

Who are my enemies? The thinkers, yes, 

The strivers for a higher culture, yes, 

The scorners of old fashioned ways, the things 

Really American ! — I know the crowd — 

That smart minority I overwhelm, 

Blot out, drown out, by massing under me 

The great majority, the common folk, 

Believers in the Bible — first for them! 

And on the way the vile saloon I crush, 

The abominable brewery — then I take away 

From banqueters and diners, diners out, 

The seekers after happiness, not God, 

The cocktail and the wine they love so well. 

This is a moral question, being so 

Is also a political — the majority 

Can do what they desire. I am consistent, 

For from the first I've preached the people's rule, 

Abided by the people's voice and taken 

Defeat with grace because the people gave it. 

So now I say the people have the right 

To pass upon all questions. As I said 

When starting as a public man, the people 

Could have what Government they desired, in fact 

A King, or despotism, if they voted for it. 

For all this talk of rights, or realms of right, 

Or individual preferences, beliefs 

And courses in the world is swallowed up 

By right of the majority — the serpent 

Of Moses, so to speak, which swallowed up 

All other serpents. 

[75] 



STARVED ROCK 

If he thought so much 
The Christian Statesman thought this way — at least 
He acted out a part which seemed to say 
He analyzed so far. He went to work 
To make his country just a despotism 
Not governed by a King, but by the people 
Laying the hand of law on everything 
Most intimate and private, having thought 
For moral aspects, as all politics 
Are moral in their essence, to repeat. 

Did not the Christian Statesman have revenge 
In building his theocracy, who saw 
All bills of right and fruit of revolution 
Ground into mortar, made into a throne 
For Demos? 

And behold King Demos now! 
A slouch hat for a crown upon his brow, 
Stuffed full of bacon and of apple pie, 
The Christian Statesman leaning on his shoulder 
A tableau of familiarity. 

The Christian Statesman having lost his hair 
Betrays the Midas ears — the oily smile 
Beams on the republic he has overthrown! 



[76] 



THE LAMENT OF SOPHONIA 

You who have wasted this June for me, 
Bitter be the seed of your love. 

Long midnights by the sea 
Have I waited for your return, 
Counting the stars — 
Bitter be the seed of your love. 

And as stars go out in the crocus light of dawn, 

As waters drip from a failing fountain, 

So passed these days of June. 

As a boy strips from a stalk of snap-dragons 

The perfect blossoms, 

And treads them into the earth, 

So you have taken the June days from me — 

Bitter be the seed of your love. 

On my couch by the sea, 

My golden curls loosened, 

Resting after the cool ablution of evening waters, 

My body white as whitecaps, under the moon, 

My eyes large as the fox's lurking in darkness, 

I have waited for your return. 

[77] 



STARVED ROCK 

May the scourge of Asia mar your beautiful body, 

Beloved ! 

You have wasted my loveliest June. 

As the unheeding wind 

Drives the falling cherry blossoms 

Into the purple waves, 

So you have scattered my days of June — 

Bitter be the seed of your love! 

I have distilled henbane for you, 

Beloved, 

And put it in a crystal vial. 

The moon of October will shine, 

Then you will come to me, 

Your wanderings and treasons finished! 

And when you slip exhausted from my arms 

I will give you wine from a golden cup, 

And pour the henbane in it — 

I shall give you henbane for the poison of defeated 

love ; 
I shall kiss your dead lips, Beloved. 

Then I shall drink, too. 

Our bodies shall feed the worms 

As these June days have fed my writhing sorrow, 

Beloved murderer of my June! 



[78] 



AT DECAPOLIS 
Mark, Chap. V 

i 

THE ACCUSATION 

I am a farmer and live 
Two miles from Decapolis. 
Where is the magistrate? Tell me 
Where the magistrate is! 

Here I had made provision 
For children and wife, 
And now I have lost my all ; 
I am ruined for life. 

I, a believer, too, 
In the synagogues. — 
What is the faith to me? 
I have lost my hogs. 

Two thousand hogs as fine 

As ever you saw, 

Drowned and choked in the sea — 

I want the law! 

They were feeding upon a hill 
When a strolling teacher 

[79] 



STARVED ROCK 

Came by and scared my hogs — 
They say he's a preacher, 

And cures the possessed who haunt 
The tombs and bogs. 
All right; but why send devils 
Into my hogs? 

They squealed and grunted and ran 
And plunged in the sea. 
And the lunatic laughed who was healed, 
Of the devils free. 

Devils or fright, no matter 

A fig or straw. 

Where is the magistrate, tell me — 

I want the law! 

II 

JESUS BEFORE MAGISTRATE AHAZ 

Ahaz, there in the seat of judgment, hear, 

If you have wit to understand my plea. 
Swine-devils are too much for swine, that's clear, 

Poor man possessed of such is partly free, 

Is neither drowned, destroyed at once, his chains 

May pluck while running, howling through the mire 

And take a little gladness for his pains, 
Some fury for unsatisfied desire. 

[80] 



AT DECAPOLIS 

But hogs go mad at once. All this I knew, — 
But then this lunatic had rights. You grant 

Swine-devils had him in their clutch and drew 
His baffled spirit. How significant, 

As they were legion and so named, the point 
Is, life bewildered, torn in greed and wrath. 

Desire puts a spirit out of joint. 

Swine-devils are for swine, who have no path. 

But man with many lusts, what is his way, 
Save in confusion, through accustomed rooms? 

He prays for night to come, and for the day 
Amid the miry places and the tombs. 

But hogs run to the sea. And there's an end. 

Would I might cast the swinish demons out 
From man forever. Yet the word attend. 

The lesson of the thing what soul can doubt? 

What is the loss of hogs, if man be saved? 

What loss of lands and houses, man being free? 
Clothed in his reason sits the man who raved, 

Clean and at peace, your honor. Come and see. 

Your honor shakes a frowning head. Not loth, 
Speaking more plainly, deeper truth to draw; 

Do your judicial duty, yet I clothe 

Free souls with courage to transgress the law 
[8.] 



STARVED ROCK 

By casting demons out from self, or those 
Like this poor lunatic whom your synagogues 

Would leave to battle singly with his woes — 
What is a man's soul to a drove of hogs? 

Which being lost, men play the hypocrite 
And make the owner chief in the affair. 

You banish me for witchcraft. I submit. 
Work of this kind awaits me everywhere. 

And into swine where better they belong, 
Casting the swinish devils out of men 
The devils have their place at last, and then 

The man is healed who had them — where's the wrong 

Save to the owner? Well, your synagogues 
Make the split hoof and chewing of the cud 

The test of lawful flesh. Not so are hogs. 
This rule has been the statute from the flood. 

Ahaz, your judgment has a fatal flaw. 

Is it not so with judges first and last — 
You break the law to specialize the law? — 

This is the devil that from you I cast. 



[82] 



WINGED VICTORY 

Icarus, Daedalus, Medea's dragons, 

Pegasus, Leonardo, Swedenborg, 

Cyrano de Bergerac, with dew-filled flagons, 

Bacon, who schemed with chemicals and forge, 

Lana, of copper spheres of air exhausted, 

Therefore made light to rise 

Up where the pathless ways are frosted 

In the blue vitriol of the skies. 

Montgolfier, Franklin, von Zeppelin, Watt, 

Edison, an engine must be, spiral springs, 

Nor steam move not these more than condor wings 

Of heaven's Argonaut, 

Gathering the sun-set clouds for golden fleece. 

Santos Dumont and Langley, over these 

The Americans, the brothers Wright. 

America finds wings for flight. 

At last out of the New World wings are born 

To wheel far up where cold is, and a light 

Dazzling and immaculate, 

In the heights where stands the temple of the Morn. 

Winged Victory more beautiful than Samothrace's 

For the New World opening the gate 

Of heaven at last, where mortals enter in 

Unconquerably and win 

[8 3 ] 



STARVED ROCK 

The great escape from earth, the measureless spaces 

Of air across the inimical abyss 

Between ethereal precipice and precipice. 

Hail! spirits of the race's 

Courage to be free, adventurers 

Of infinite desire! 

Hail! seed of the ancient wars, 

Of burning glasses, catapults, Greek fire! 

Hail! final conquerors, 

Out of whose vision greater vision springs — 

America with wings! 

The vulture lags behind, the Gorgones, 

Revealed or ambushed in the thunder clouds, 

Would tear from heaven these audacities 

Of deathless spirit, shatter them and spill 

The blasphemy of genius from the sky. 

Gods are you, flyers, whom no danger shrouds, 

No terror shakes the will. 

Gods are you though you suffer and must die, 

Men winged as gods who fly! 

Borelli, in the centuries that are gone, 

With feathers made him wings, but steel 

Soars for the petrol demon's toil, 

Fed by the sap of trees far under earth 

In the long eons past turned into oil. 

The petrol demon in the enchanted coil 

Of lightning howls and spins the invisible wheel 

Which had its birth 

[84] 



WINGED VICTORY 

In the rapt vision of Archimides. 

Borelli, in the centuries that are gone, 

With feathers made him wings. But now a swan, 

A steel-borne beetle cleaves the immensities, 

Fed with fire of amber and oil of trees, 

And soars against the sun, 

And over mountains, seas ! 

Flight more auspicious than the flight of cranes 
In Homer's Troyland, or than eagles flying 
Toward Imaus when the midnight wanes. 
Victorious flight! symbol of man defying 
Low dungeons of the spirit, darkness, chains. 
Flight beyond superstition and the reigns 
Of tyrannies where thought of man should be 
Swift as his thought is free. 
Flight of an era born to-day 
That puts the past and all its dead away. 

Locusts of the new Jehovah sent to scourge 
All Pharaohs who enslave. 
Hornets with multiple eyes, 
Scorning surprise, 
And armed to purge 
The despot and the knave 
Out of the fairer land where men shall live, 
Winning all things which were so fugitive 
Of wisdom, happiness and peace, 
Of hope, of spiritual release 
[8 S ] 



STARVED ROCK 

From fear of life, life's mean significance, 
Till life be ordered, not a thing of chance. 



The hopelessness of him who cried 

Vanity of Vanities 

Was justified, 

But now no longer must abide. 

Failure was his, and failure filled the hours 

Of our fathers in the past — let it depart. 

Triumph is come, and triumph must be ours. 

The archangels of earth through Israel, 

Through India and Greece 

Shall find us wings for life and for increase 

Of living, and shall battle down the hell 

Whose fires still smolder and profane. 

Life and the human heart 

In living must become the aeroplane, 

Not the yoked oxen and the cart. 

Let but the thought of East and West be blent, 

Europe, America, the Orient, 

To give life wings as Time's last great event: 

The final glory of wings to the soul of man 

In an order of life human, but divine, 

Fashioned in carefulest thought, powerful but of delicate 

design, 
As the wings of the aeroplane are. 
Where spirit of man is used to the full, but saved, 
As the petrol demon, in this dragon of war, 
Uses and saves his power. 

[86] 



WINGED VICTORY 

Where neither thought, truth, love nor gifts, nor any 

flower 
Of spirit of man, so mangled or enslaved 
In the eras gone, is wasted or depraved. 

Man shall no longer crawl, the curse is raised 

With winning of his wings. 

Dust he no more shall eat, 

Who crawls not, but from feet 

Has risen to wings! 

Man shall no longer python be. 

These wings are prophecies of a world made free! 

Man shall no longer crawl, the curse is raised. 

He has soared to the gate of heaven and gazed 

Into the meadows of infinity, 

Winged and with lightning shod, 

Beyond the old day's lowering cloud and murk. 

The heavens declare the glory of God, 

Man shows His handiwork! 



[87] 



OH YOU SABBATARIANS! 

Oh you Sabbatarians, methodists and puritans; 

You bigots, devotees and ranters; 

You formalists, pietists and fanatics, 

Teetotalers and hydropots, 

You thin ascetics, androgynous souls, 

Chaste and epicene spirits, 

Eyes blind to color, ears deaf to sound, 

Fingers insensitive, 

Do what you will, 

Make what laws you choose — 

Yet there are high spaces of rapture 

Which you can never touch, 

They are beyond you and hidden from you. 

We leave you to the dull assemblies, 

Charades, cantatas and lectures; 

The civic meetings where you lie and act 

And work up business; 

The teas of forced conversation, 

And receptions of how-de-dos, 

And stereotyped smiles; 

The church sociables; 

And the calls your young men of clammy hands 

And fetid breath 

Pay to anaemic virgins — 

[88] 



OH YOU SABBATARIANS! 

These are yours; 

Take them — 

But I tell you 

In places you know not of, 

We, the free spirits, the livers, 

Guests at the wedding feast of life, 

Drinkers of the wine made by Jesus, 

Worshipers of fire and of God, 

Who made the grape, 

And filled the veins of His legitimate children 

With ethereal flame — 

We the lovers of life in unknown places 

Shall taste of ancient wine, 

And put flowers in golden vases, 

And open precious books of song, 

And look upon dreaming Buddhas, 

And marble masks of genius. 

We shall hear the sound of stringed instruments, 

Voicing the dreams of great spirits. 

We shall know the rapture of kisses 

And long embraces, 

And the sting of folly. 

We shall entwine our arms in voluptuous sleep, 

And in the misery of your denials 

And your cowardice and your fears 

You shall not even dream that we exist. 

Unintelligible weeds ! We, the blossoms of life's garden, 
Flourish on the hills of variable winds — 
We perish, but you never live. 

[8 9 ] 



PALLAS ATHENE 

Athene! Virgin! Goddess! Queen! descend, 
Come to us and befriend. 
Set up your shrine among us and defend 
Our realm against corruptions which impend. 

***** 

Divinity of order and of law, 

Most powerful and wise, 

Our land reclaim. 

Patron of the assemblies of the free, 

Our cities shame! 

Dethrone our bastard Demos, partisans 

Of Moody, Campbell, all the Wesleyans. 

Come down with awe, 

Enceladus and Pallas strike, who rise 

Against your father and his hierarchy. 

Smite the giants Superstition, Force, 

Fanaticism, Ignorance and Faith 

In village gods, and bury them beneath 

Volcanic mountains. Yoke them to the course 

And labor of your wisdom. Fling your shield, 

Medusa faced, before the brows of clay, 

Who rule our clattering day ; 

Flash it before their brows and make 

Stones for the pavement of the way 

[90] 



PALLAS ATHENE 

Whereon you drive your chariot, golden-wheeled. 

Descend, O Goddess, for the memory's sake 

And for the hope's sake of your son, 

Franklin, your herald, Washington, 

Who dreamed to make perpetual 

Our Parthenon, column, court and hall. 

And save it from the donjon, minaret, 

The cross, the spire, the vane, the parapet! 



We have no god but Jesus, 
No god but Billiken. 
Nature and Dionysius 
Come back again! 
Jehovah is an alien tyrant, rules us 
From arid Palestine, 
Who mouths a heaven that fools us, 
And curses the olive and vine, 
And the smiles of the lyric nine. 
Gods are they, hard and full of wrath 
Who drive us on the unintelligible path. 
Gods are they, and unreckoning of their work 
Too puerile or despotic, or with feet 
That drip blood on a mercy seat. 
They nerve our hands with hatred's dirk, 
Or weaken us with poison sweet. 
Drug us to mumble this is life, who feel 
In our delirium, no less, that life 
Is an ocean that breaks the grist stones and the wheel 
Set up to feed this world of strife 
[9i] 



STARVED ROCK 



By Mary's son, Mary the wife 



Come from the Islands of the Blest, 

Goddess, and give us wisdom, vision, rest. 

Reveal a Beauty for our hearts to love. 

The wooden ark of Moses, overlaid 

With strips of gold, 

And all the spurious covenant thereof 

By which our life is obelised 

We would no more behold, 

Who have so vainly with it temporized. 

Fruitless our spirits have these centuries prayed 

Before the Janus cross, 

The oracle that speaks in riddles, asks 

Penitence, obedience, tasks 

Which nature interdicts. 

We are the body on the crucifix, 

Not Jesus; we, the race, are crucified, 

And die upon the cross, 

For centuries have died. 

Come and restore our loss 

Of truth, the eyes of spirits undeceived, 

Courage with nature, strike the opiate joss 

To ruin with your sword, 

O most adored! 

Give us Reality, O lover of men, 

Republics, cities, lands. 

Uplift our eyes to Beauty, once perceived 

We may rebuild the Areopagus, 

With wiser eyes and hands. 

Bring Thought, the Argus, consciousness 

[92] 



PALLAS ATHENE 

That looks before and after, 

And grace perpetual of Mnemosyne — 

Remembering we shall be free! 

Save us, O Goddess, from the drifting crowd, 

Wondering, witless, loud, 

The lovers of the minute who possess 

No reverence and no laughter! 

***** 

Goddess! with silver helmet, guardian 

You may be, if we worship at your shrine, 

Before the gates of Boston and New York, 

Chicago, San Francisco, through the span 

Of continents and isles; your heart incline 

Toward our turbulent blood from many climes, 

Worships and times. 

Lift from our necks the brass and jeweled torque 

Of restless zealots and of idiot mouths; 

The locusts swarm, the land is cursed with drouths, 

Bring rain and dew, 

Plant olive trees, 

Set on our hills the emblem of the vine; 

Bring to our hearts the lofty purities 

Of song and laughter, wisdom, and renew 

Temples of beauty and academies! 

***** 

Set up your golden altar 

In Parthenons in every village and shire. 

The crucifix and psalter, 

The ikons and the toys of vain desire 

[93] 



STARVED ROCK 

We cast into the fire. 

We keep the lover Jesus, for his hope, 

His humanism and his flaming zeal. 

He will approach your altar, he will kneel 

At last before you, for the horoscope 

Of life misread in youth 

And youthful dreams and faith. 

Goddess! our globe that hungers for the truth 

Between the roar of life, silence of death 

Cannot be stayed or cowed. But, oh, descend 

First to our soil, Atlantis, and befriend. 

Make us a light across the fathomless sea 

Of centuries to be, 

Even as Athens is, divinity! 



[94] 



AT SAGAMORE HILL 

All things proceed as though the stage were set 

For acts arranged. I have not learned the part, 

The day enacts itself. I take the tube, 

Find daylight at Jamaica, know the place 

Through some rehearsal, all the country know 

Which glides along the window, is not seen 

For definite memory. At Oyster Bay 

A taxi stands in readiness; in a trice 

We circle strips of water, slopes of hills, 

Climb where a granite wall supports a hill, 

A mass of blossoms, ripening berries, too, 

And enter at a gate, go up a drive, 

Shadowed by larches, cedars, silver willows. 

This taxi just ahead is in the play, 

Is here in life as I had seen it in 

The crystal of prevision, reaches first 

The porte cochere. This moment from the door 

Comes Roosevelt, and greets the man who leaves 

The taxi just ahead, then waits for me, 

Puts a strong hand that softens into mine, 

And says, O, this is bully! 

We go in. 

He leaves my antecessor in a room 
Somewhere along the hall, and comes to me 

[95] 



STARVED ROCK 

Who wait him in the roomy library. 
How are those lovely daughters? Oh, by George! 
I thought I might forget their names, I know — 
It's Madeline and Marcia. Yes, you know 
Corinne adores the picture which you sent 
Of Madeline — your boy, too? In the war! 
That's bully — tea is coming — we must talk, 
I have five hundred things to ask you — set 
The tea things on this table, Anna — now, 
Do you take sugar, lemon? O, you smoke! 
I'll give you a cigar. 



The talk begins. 
He's dressed in canvas khaki, flannel shirt, 
Laced boots for farming, chopping trees, perhaps; 
A stocky frame, curtains of skin on cheeks 
Drained slightly of their fat ; gash in the neck 
Where pus was emptied lately; one eye dim, 
And growing dimmer; almost blind in that. 
And when he walks he rolls a little like 
A man whose youth is fading, like a cart 
That rolls when springs are old. He is a moose, 
Scarred, battered from the hunters, thickets, stones; 
Some finest tips of antlers broken off, 
And eyes where images of ancient things 
Flit back and forth across them, keeping still 
A certain slumberous indifference 
Or wisdom, it may be. 

[96] 



AT SAGAMORE HILL 

But then the talk! 
Bronze dolphins in a fountain cannot spout 
More streams at once: Of course the war, the emperor, 
America in the war, his sons in France, 
The dangers, separation, let them go! 
The fate has been appointed — to our task, 
Live full our lives with duty, go to sleep ! 
For I say, he exclaims, the man who fears 
To die should not be born, nor left to live. 
It's Celtic poetry, free verse. He says: 
You nobly celebrate in your Spoon River 
The pioneers, the soldiers of the past, 
Why do you flout our Philippine adventure? 
No difference, Colonel, in the stock, the difference 
Lies in the causes. Well, another stream: 
Mark Hanna, Quay and others, what I hate, 
He says to me, is the Pharisee — I can stand 
All other men. And you will find the men 
So much maligned had gentle qualities, 
And noble dreams. Poor "Quay, he loved the Indians, 
Sent for me when he lay there dying, said, 
Look after such a tribe when I am dead. 
I want to crawl upon a sunny rock 
And die there like a wolf. Did he say that, 
Colonel, to you? Yes! and you know, a man 
Who says a thing like that has in his soul 
An orb of light to flash that meaning forth 
Of heroism, nature. 

Time goes on, 
The play is staged, must end ; my taxi comes 

[97] 



STARVED ROCK 

In half an hour or so. Before it comes, 
Let's walk about the farm and see my corn. 
A fellow on the porch is warming heels 
As we go by. I'll see him when you go, 
The Colonel says. 



The rail fence by the corn 
Is good to lean on as we stand and talk 
Of farming, cattle, country life. We turn, 
Sit for some moments in a garden house 
On which a rose vine clambers all in bloom, 
And from this hilly place look at the strips 
Of water from the bay a mile beyond, 
Below some several terraces of hills 
Where firs and pines are growing. This resembles 
A scene in Milton that I've read. He knows, 
Catches the reminiscence, quotes the lines — and then 
Something of country silence, look of grass 
Where the wind stirs it, mystical little breaths 
Coming between the roses; something, too, 
In Vulcan's figure; he is Vulcan, too, 
Deprived his shop, great bellows, hammer, anvil, 
Sitting so quietly beside me, hands 
Spread over knees; something of these evokes 
A pathos, and immediately in key 
With all of this he says: I have achieved 
By labor, concentration, not at all 
By gifts or genius, being commonplace 
In all my faculties. 

[98] 



AT SAGAMORE HILL 

Not all, I say. 
One faculty is not, your over-mind, 
Eyed front and back to see all faculties, 
Govern and watch them. If we let you state 
Your case against you, timid born, you say, 
Becoming brave, asthmatic, growing strong: 
No marksman, yet becoming skilled with guns; 
No gift of speech, yet winning golden speech; 
No gift of writing, writing books, no less 
Of our America to thrill and live — 
If, as I say, we let you state your case 
Against you as you do, there yet remains 
This over-mind, and that is what — a gift 
Of genius or of what? By George, he says, 
What are you, a theosophist? I don't know. 
I know some men achieve a single thing, 
Like courage, charity, in this incarnation; 
You have achieved some twenty things. I think 
That this is going some for a man whose gifts 
Are commonplace and nothing else. 

We rise 
And saunter toward the house — and there's the man 
Still warming heels; my taxi, too, has come. 
We are to meet next Wednesday in New York 
And finish up some subjects — he has thoughts 
How I can help America, if I drop 
This line or that a little, all in all. 

***** 

[99] 



STARVED ROCK 

But something happens; I have met a loss; 
Would see no one, and write him I am off. 
And on that Wednesday flashes from the war 
Say Quentin has been killed: we had not met 
If I had stayed to meet him. 

So, good-by 
Upon the lawn at Sagamore was good-by, 
Master of Properties, you stage the scene 
And let us speak and pass into the wings! 
One thing was fitting — dying in your sleep — 
A touch of Nature, Colonel, you who loved 
And were beloved of Nature, felt her hand 
Upon your brow at last to give to you 
A bit of sleep, and after sleep perhaps 
Rest and rejuvenation; you will wake 
To newer labors, fresher victories 
Over those faculties not disciplined 
As you desired them in these sixty years. 



[ioo] 



TO ROBERT NICHOLS 

England has found another voice in you 

Of beauty and of truth, 
True to their soul, as you are true — 

Singer and soldier, yet a youth. 

Out of the trenches and the rage of blood, 

The hatred and the lies 
You, like a wounded sky-lark, in a flood 

Pour forth these melodies, 

Of a spirit which has suffered, yet has soared 
Above the stench of hell and death's defeats. 

I look at you, as often I have pored 
On the death mask of Keats. 

Or the face of him quickly and gladly going 

The waves of the sea under, 
To the land of man's unknowing, 

Or the land of wonder. 

And the war had you ! what can it give 

In return for souls like yours 
Mangled or blotted out? — who shall forgive 

The war while time endures? 
[ioi] 



STARVED ROCK 

Back of the shouting mob, the brazen bands, 

The soldiers marching well, 
Gangrene cries out and Rupert Brooke's hands 

Clutch in a hemorrhage of hell. 

Yet you found God through this? through war, 
Through love found vision, perhaps peace? 

Keep them in your breast like the morning star — 
May their light increase. 

Waves on the sea's breast catch the light 

While the hollows between 
Are dark — you are a wave whose height 

Is smitten by the Light unseen, 

Urged by the Sea's power to the glory 

Of the christening sun. 
When the calm comes and darkness, transitory 

Be your doubt, or none. 

These words from me who have the hard way traveled 

Of pain and thought, 
In a weaving never wholly unraveled, 

Or wholly wrought, 

For your spirit and your songs, gladness 

For the hope of you, and praise 
To life, who gave you out of the world's madness 

In these our days. 

[ 102] 



BONNYBELL: THE BUTTERFLY 

As I shall die, let your belief 

Find in these words too poor and brief 

My soul's essential self. 

My grief 
Down to the day I knew you locks 
Its secret word in paradox: 
I who loved truth could not be true, 
Could only love the truth and glow 
With words of truth who loved it so, 
Even while I dishonored you. 
I who loved constancy was false, 
And heeded but in part the calls 
Of loveliness for love and you. 
I am but half of that I hoped, 
And that half hardly more than words 
I cheered my soul with as it groped: 
As from their bowers of rain the birds 
Sing feebly, pining for the sun. 
As I am all of this, by fate 
Lose what I could so well have won, 
Life leaves me half articulate, 
My failure, nature half-expressed, 
Or wholly hidden in my breast. 
Yes, dear, the secret of me lies 
[ 103] 



STARVED ROCK 

Where words scarce come to analyze. 
Yet who knows why he is this or that? 
What moves, defeats him, works him ill? 
What blood ancestral of the bat 
Narrows his music to the shrill 
Squeak of a flitting thing that hunts 
For gnats, which never singing, fronts 
The full moon flooding down the vale, 
The perfect soul, the nightingale! 

You have wooed music all your life, 

And I have sought for love. I think 

My soul was marked, dear, by a wife 

Who loved a man immersed in drink, 

Who crushed her love which would not die. 

If this be true, my soul's great thirst 

Was blended with a fault accursed. 

My mother's love is my soul's cry. 

My father's vileness, lies and lusts, 

His cruel heart, inconstancy 

That kept my mother with the crusts 

Of life to gnaw, are in my blood. 

My rainbow wings I scarce can loose, 

Or if I free them, there's the mud 

That weighs and mars their use. 

You have wooed music. But suppose 
The hampered hours and poverty 
Broke down your spirit's harmony, 
Then if you found you could achieve 
[ 104] 



BONNYBELL: THE BUTTERFLY 

The music in you, if you could 

But pick a pocket or deceive, 

Which would you call the greater good — 

The music or a sin withstood? 

Suppose you passed a window where 

The violin of your despair 

Lay ready for your hands! At last 

You stole it as you hurried past, 

And hid it underneath your rags 

Until you reached your attic room, 

Then tuned the strings and burned the tags. 

And drew the bow till lyric fire 

Should all your thieving thoughts consume: 

In such case what is your desire — 

The music or the violin? 

And what in such case is your sin? 

And if they caught you in your theft, 

Would you, just to be honest, dear, 

Forefront your thief-self as your deft 

And dominant genius, or the ear 

Which tortured you? 

Would you not say, 
Music intrigues me night and day? 
My soul is the musician's. First 
In my soul's love is music. Would 
You falsify to keep your good ? 
Deny your theft, or put the worst 
Construction on your soul, obscure 
Thereby your soul's investiture 

[105] 



STARVED ROCK 

Of music's gift and music's lure? 

If you were flame you would pretend 

What you would fain be to the end, 

Keep your good name and keep as well 

The violin. May this not be 

In some realm an integrity? 

Now for myself, dear, though I lack 
The gift of utterance to explain 
My life's pursuit and passion, pain, 
Or why I acted thus, concealed 
Thoughts that you hold were best revealed, 
Your eyes to heal themselves must track 
And find my soul's way in its quest 
Followed from girlhood without rest. 
Music is not its hope, but love. . . . 
And I saw somehow I could lift 
My life through you, and rise above 
What I had been. And since your gift 
Of love saw me as truthful, true 
I kept that best side to your view, 
And hoped to be what you desired 
If I but struggled, still aspired. 
And as for lapses, even while 
I fooled you with the wanton's smile, 
He was my lover till you came 
To light my life with purer flame. 
Was it, beloved, so great a sin? 
He was a practice violin. 
Oh, how I knew this when your strings 
[106] 



BONNYBELL: THE BUTTERFLY 

Sang to me afterward when I slept 
Upon your breast again. I wept, 
Do you remember? I was grieving 
Neither for him, nor your deceiving, 
Rather (how strange is life) that he 
Was prelude to your harmony; 
Rather that while I walked with him, 
With you I found the cherubim, 
Left my old self at last with wings, 
Saw beauty clear where it was dim 
Before through my imaginings. 

Do you suppose the primrose knows 
What skill adds petals to its crown? 
How many failures laugh and frown 
Upon the hand that crosses, sows? 
The hand is ignorant of the power 
Obedient in the primrose flower 
To the hand's skill that toils to add 
New petals till the flower be clad 
In fuller glory. What's the bond 
Between us two, that I respond 
To what you are ? Nor do you know 
What lies within me fain to grow 
Under your hand. 

But if the worm 
Should call itself the butterfly, 
Since it will soon become one, I 
Better to be myself affirm 
[ 107] 



STARVED ROCK 

'That I am Beauty, Truth — for you 
I would be Beauty, Truth, imbue 
Your life with love and loveliness. 
And you can make me Beauty, Truth, 
And I can bring you soul success 
If you but train my flower whose youth 
Still may be governed, keep erect 
My hope in this poor earthen sod. 
I think this is a task which God 
Appoints for us. We may neglect 
The task in this life, but to find 
It is a task we leave behind, 
Only to meet it, till we see 
Our fate worked out in lives to be. 

O, from my lesser self to spread 
My golden wings above your head, 
Through love of love and you discard 
The sting, the rings of green, the shard. 
Oh, to be Psyche, passion tried 
Through flesh, desire, purified! 
Love is my lode-star, music yours — 
Souls must go where the lode-star lures. 



[108] 



HYMN TO AGNI 

God of fire, 

God of the flame of our love, 

Beyond whose might no God is, 

And none in the realm of birth, 

Agni! Adored one, 

May we never suffer in thy friendship! 

Thou, who art re-born each day, 

And whose symbol is the sacred drill 

Wherewith fire is made for the temple, 

Morning by morning, 

Freshly create our love as the sun awakes, 

Preserve our love, O Agni! 

The crocuses, the dandelions, 
The golden forsythia 
Perished in May. 

But roses burn on the altar of earth, 
Bridal blossoms, whitest of fire, 
Dance in the winds of June. 
Agni, remember us, 
Remember our love! 

We have prayed to you, powerful one — 
Thou whose name is first 
[ 109] 



STARVED ROCK 

In the first of the sacred hymns; 

Thou to whom sacrifices pass 

To the Gods, thou messenger of the Gods, 

Thou who art born a little lower than the most 

high Indra 
Hast heard our prayer — 
Hear still our prayer: 
Abide with us, O Agni, and befriend; 
Make our hearts as temples, 
And our desire as the drill, 
Wherewith fire is created 
For the sacred sacrifice of love, 
And for a light to our spirits — 
Turn not away from our prayers, 
O Agni! 

Here before the fire of the Sun of June 

Kneeling 

Hand in hand, 

Our eyes closed before the splendor of your spirit 

Hear our prayer, O Agni: 

May we never suffer in thy friendship. 



[no] 



EPITAPH FOR US 

One with the turf, one with the tree 
As we are now, you soon shall be, 
As you are now, so once were we. 

The hundred years we looked upon 

Were Goethe and Napoleon. 

Now twice a hundred years are gone, 

And you gaze back and contemplate, 
Lloyd George and Wilson, William's hate, 
And Nicholas of the bloody fate; 

Us, too, who won the German war, 
Who knew less what the strife was for 
Than you, now that the conqueror 

Lies with the conquered. You will say: 
" Here sleep the brave, the grave, the gay, 
The wise, the blind, who lost the way." 

But for us English, for us French, 

Americans who held the trench, 

You will not grieve, though the rains drench 

Em] 



STARVED ROCK 

The hills and valleys, being these. 
Who pities stocks, or pities trees? 
Or stones, or meadows, rivers, seas? 

We are with nature, we have grown 
At one with water, earth, and stone — 
Man only is separate and alone, 

Earth sundered, left to dream and feel 
Illusion still in pain made real, 
The hope a mist, but fire the wheel. 

But what was love, and what was lust, 
Memory, passion, pain or trust, 
Returned to clay and blown in dust, 

Is nature without memory — 
Yet as you are, so once were we, 
As we are now, you soon shall be, 

Blind fellows of the indifferent stars 
Healed of your bruises, of your scars 
In love and living, in the wars. 

Come to us where the secret lies 
Under the riddle of the skies, 
Surrender fingers, speech, and eyes. 

Sink into nature and become 

The mystery that strikes you dumb, 

Be clay and end your martyrdom. 

[112] 



EPITAPH FOR US 

Rise up as thought, the secret know. 

As passionless as stars bestow 
Your glances on the world below, 

As a man looks at hand or knee. 

What is the turf of you, what the tree? 

Earth is a phantom — let it be. 



[113] 



BOTTICELLI TO SIMONETTA 

I would give you all my heart, and I have given 

All my heart to you to have and keep 
With your heart, where my heart has found its heaven 

In a light immortal, and a peace like sleep. 
Here is my heart, for you to have and treasure, 

Your woman's heart will treasure it, 
For a love that only love may find a measure, 

And only love like yours can measure it. 

In absence and in separation praying 

Before your love, my heart receive, 
My heart which kneels to you, so gently laying 

Hands of deep prayer, too reverent to grieve 
For lives divided, yet compassionate, 

As my poor heart is pitiful for yours. 
These hearts of ours, that know so deep a fate, 

Even as a heart that silently endures, 
Lie on an altar of consuming fire, 

Our hearts together, taking life thereof. 
Ashes must come of two hearts which aspire 

To God, who has given love. 



[in] 



FLOWER IN THE GARDEN 

Flower in the garden, 

Wholly itself and free, 

Yearning and joyous, 

Breathing its charm 

To the passer-by 

On the sighing air — 

Beloved flower! 

Flower desired for something beyond 

Itself as a flower; 

Giving the promise of ecstasy 

Beyond its own being, 

Its place in the garden — 

A shadowed flame 

Of an absolute! 

Flower that I have taken 
From its place in the garden 
To realize the ultimate Beauty; 
Flower in the vase at my side, 
Breathing a sweeter life 
Into the air I breathe, 
A spirit that makes me faint, 
Sorrowful with a strange languor. 
Flower no less beautiful, 
But revealing an essence 

[115] 



STARVED ROCK 

That changes my flower. 
O, my flower that is with me but lost, 
Lost in the disclosure of other hues, 
Other scents! 

Flower of passion, flower of love, 
Flower that I have won and lost, 
Mystical flower! 



[116] 



INEXORABLE DEITIES 

Deities ! 

Inexorable revealers, 

Give me strength to endure 

The gifts of the Muses, 

Daughters of Memory. 

When the sky is blue as Minerva's eyes 

Let me stand unshaken; 

When the sea sings to the rising sun 

Let me be unafraid; 

When the meadow lark falls like a meteor 

Through the light of afternoon, 

An unloosened fountain of rapture, 

Keep my heart from spilling 

Its vital power; 

When at the dawn 

The dim souls of crocuses hear the calls 

Of waking birds, 

Give me to live but master the loveliness. 

Keep my eyes unharmed from splendors 

Unveiled by you. 

And my ears at peace 

Filled no less with the music 

Of Passion and Pain, growth and change. 



[117] 



STARVED ROCK 

But O ye sacred and terrible powers, 
Reckless of my mortality, 
Strengthen me to behold a face, 
To know the spirit of a beloved one 
Yet to endure, yet to dare! 



[118]' 



ARIELLE 

Arielle ! Arielle ! 

Gracious and fanciful, 

Laughing and joyous! 

Arielle girlish, queenly, majestical; 

Deep eyed for memory, 

Pensive for dreams. 

Arielle crowned with the light of thought, 

Mystical, reverent, 

Musing on the splendor of life, 

And the blossom of love 

Pressed into her hands — 

Arielle! 

Music awakes in the hall! 

Shadowy pools and glistening willows, 

And elfin shapes amid silver shadows 

Are made into sound! 

Arielle listens with hidden eyes, 

Sitting amid her treasures, 

A presence like a lamp of alabaster, 

A yearning gardenia 

That broods in a shaft of light . . . 

Arielle clapping hands and running 

About her rooms, 

Arranging cloths of gold and jars of crystal, 

[119] 



STARVED ROCK 

And vases of ruby cloisonne. 
Arielle matching blues and reds: 
Pomegranates, apples in bowls of jade. 
Arielle reposing, lost in Plato, 
In the contemplation of Agni. 
Arielle, the cup to her lips, 
A laughing Thalia! 
Arielle! 

The breath of morning moves through the casement 

window — 
Arielle taking the cool of it on her brow, 
And the ecstasy of the robin's song into her heart. 
Arielle in prayer at dawn 
Laying hands upon secret powers : 
Lead me in the path of love to my love. 
Arielle merging the past and the present, 
As light increases light — 
Arielle adored — 
Arielle! 



[I20] 



SOUNDS OUT OF SORROW 

Of all sounds out of the soul of sorrow 
These I would hear no more: 
The cry of a new-born child at midnight; 
The sound of a closing door, 

That hushes the echo of departing feet 
When the loneliness of the room 
Is haunted with the silence 
Of a dead god's tomb; 

The songs of robins at the white dawn, 
Since I may never see 
The eyes they waked in the April 
Now gone from me; 

Music into whose essence entered 
The soul of an hour : — 
A face, a voice, the touch of a hand, 
The scent of a flower. 



[121] 



MOURNIN' FOR RELIGION 

Brothers and sisters, I'm mournin' for religion, 

But I can't get religion, it's my woman interferin'. 

I sing and I pray, and I'm real perseverin,' 

But I can't get religion, 

That's all I have to say. 

I know there is a fountain, a Jesus, a comforter, 

A heaven, a Jerusalem, a day of Pentecost, 

Salvation for the wishin', blood for sin's remission, 

A covenant, a promise for souls that are lost. 

But I can't get religion, the salvation feelin', 

The vision of the Lamb, forgiveness and healin'. 

I have a sort of numbness 

When I see the mourners kneelin'. 

I have a kind of dumbness 

When the preacher is appealhY. 

I have a kind of wariness, even contrariness, 

Even while I'm fearin' 

The bottomless pit and the shut gates of heaven. 

It's my woman interferin' — 

For you see when they say : 

Come to the mercy seat, come, come, 

The spirit and the bride 

Say come, come, 

[ 122] 



MOURNIN' FOR RELIGION 

I think of my woman who bore so many children; 

I think of her a cookin' for harvesters in summer; 

I think of her a lyin' there, a dyin' there, the neighbors 

Who came in to fan her and how she never murmured ; 

And then I seem to grow number and number, 

And something in me says: 

Why didn't Jesus help her for to die, 

Why did Jesus always pass her by, 

Let her break her health down as I was growing poorer, 

Let her lie and suffer with no medicine to cure her, 

I wouldn't treat a stray dog as Jesus acted to her. 

If these are devil words, I'm a child of the devil. 

And this is why I'm dumb 

As the spirit and the bride say come ! 

***** 

I am old and crippled — sixty in December. 
And I wonder if it's God that stretches out and hands us 
Troubles we remember? 
I'm alone besides, I need the Comforter, 
All the children's grown up, livin' out in Kansas. 
My old friend Billy died of lung fever. . . . 
But the worst of it is I'm really a believer, 
Expect to go to hell if I don't get religion. 
And I need this religion to stop this awful grievin' 
About my woman lyin' there in the cemetery, 
And you can't stop that grievin' simply by believin'. 
So I mourn for religion, 
I mourn for religion, 
My old heart breaks for religion ! 
[123] 



THYAMIS 

Thyamis, a gallant of Memphis, 

Where melons were served 

Iced with snow from the Mountains of the Moon ; 

Thyamis, a philanderer in Alexandris 

Rich in parchments and terebinth, 

Lies here in the museum. 

His lips are brown as peach leather, 

Through which his teeth are sticking, 

White as squash seeds. 

***** 

Knowing that he must die and leave her 
He slew the lovely Chariclea 
Who sailed with him on the Nile 
Under the moon of Egypt. 
This is the body of Chariclea 
Undesiring the arms of Thyamis. 
This is the remnant of Chariclea, 
Wrapped in a gunny sack, 
Rotted with gums and balsams. 

***** 

As the sands of the desert are stirred 
By the wind when the sun sets, 
The open door of the museum 
Lets in the wind to shake 

[124] 



THYAMIS 

The cerements of Chariclea, 

And the stray hairs on the forsaken head 

Of Thyamis. 

***** 

Of desire long dead; 

Of a murder done in the days of Pharaoh; 

Of Thyamis dying who took to death 

The lovely Chariclea; 

Of Chariclea who shrank 

From the love death of Thyamis 

The multitude passes, unknowing. 

***** 



[ 125 ] 



I SHALL GO DOWN INTO THIS LAND 

I shall go down into this land 
Of the great Northwest: 
This land of the free ordinance, 
This land made free for the free 
By the patriarchs. 

***** 
Shall it be Michigan, 
Or Illinois, 
Or Indiana? 
These are my people, 
These are my lovers, my friends — 
Mingle my dust with theirs, 
Ye sacred powers ! 

***** 
Clouds, like convoys on infinite missions, 
Bound for infinite harbors 
Float over the length of this land. 
And in the centuries to come 
The rocks and trees of this land will turn, 
These fields and hills will turn 
Under unending convoys of clouds — 
O ye clouds! 

Drench my dust and mingle it 
With the dust of the pioneers; 
[126] 



I SHALL GO DOWN INTO THIS LAND 

My mates, my friends, 
Toilers and sufferers, 
Builders and dreamers, 
Lovers of freedom. 



Earth that looks into space, 
As a man in sleep looks up, 
And is voiceless, at peace, 
Divining the secret — 

1 shall know the secret 

When I go down into this land 
Of the great Northwest! 

* * * * 

Draw my dust 

With the dust of my beloved 

Into the substance of a great rock, 

Upon whose point a planet flames, 

Nightly, in a thrilling moment 

Of divine revelation 

Through endless time! 



[127] 



SPRING LAKE 

B?7 8e* KO.T Ov\vfJL7TLO KaptjVOiV x (00 f JLevv ' : K VP' 



Iliad. 



Some thought a bomb hit 

Trotter's garage. 

Some thought a comet 

Blew up the Lodge. 

Milem Alkire was riding in a Dodge, 
Saw the water splashing, and a great light flashing, 
And a thousand arrows flying from the heaven's glow; 
And heard a great banging and a howling clanging 
Of a bull-hide's string to a monstrous bow. 



II 

Milem Alkire became a changed man, 

So the thing began, guess it if you can. 

He turned in an hour from a man who was sour 

To a singing, dancing satyr like Pan. 

He hobbled and clattered as if nothing mattered 

Down in his cellar for any strange fellow, 

Bringing up the bottles, clinking, winking, 

For the crowd that was drinking. 

All against the statutes in such case provided. 

[128] 



SPRING LAKE 

Drew well water to cool the wine off, 
Polished up the glasses with a humorous cough. 
Milem Alkire for years had resided 
A quiet, pious, law abiding citizen 
Turned in an hour to a wag who derided 
The feelings of the people, the village steeple, 
And the ways that befit a man — 
This Spring Lake citizen. 



Ill 

And about the time 
That Milem Alkire 
Became a wine seller, 
And begetter of crime, 
With parties on his lawn 
From mid-night to dawn, 
Making the wine free 
Under the pine tree, 
Starling Turner's wife ran away, 
A woman who before was anything but gay. 
Never had a lover in her life, so they say, 
But like other clay, had the longing to stray. 
She saw a cornet pla)'er, 
An idler, a strayer, 

And left her husband furious threatening to slay her, 
And cursing musicians who have no honest missions. 
So Starling Turner, a belated learner 
Of life as music, laughter, folly, 
Grew suddenly jolly, forgot his melancholy, 
[ 129] 



STARVED ROCK 

Became a dancer and rounded up the fiddlers, 

Got up a contest of fifty old fiddlers, 

With prizes for fiddling from best to middling: 

A set of fine harness for the best piece of fiddling. 

Work stopped, business stopped, all went mad, 

Mad about music, the preachers looked sad 

For music, the like of which the village never had. . . . 

The children in the street were shockingly bad, 

And danced like pixies scantily clad; 

Knocked away the crutches from venerable hobblers, 

Threw pebbles at the windows of grocers and cobblers. 

Made fun of the preachers, the grammar school teachers, 

Stole spring chickens and turkey gobblers, 

Roasted hooked geese in front of the police. 

Till the quidnuncs decided it wasn't any use, 

The devil had let a thousand devils loose. 



IV 

Then folks began to read old books forbidden. 
Carpenters orated and expatiated 
On Orphic doctrines and wisdoms long hidden, 
A Swede who couldn't speak began to talk Greek. 
There were meetings in the park from dawn to dark. 
And wild talk of razing the village, effacing 
The plain little houses and the town replacing 
With carved stone, columns and temples gracing 
Gardens and vistas the water front embracing. 
And others would create a brand new state. 
So fire broke out in the strangest places. 

[130] 



SPRING LAKE 

The belated traveler beheld elfin faces 

Springing from nothing, to vanish in a second. 

Potatoes unthrown went whizzing round corners. 

Voices were heard and white fingers beckoned, 

Till all the wise ones, doubters and scorners 

Although they winced, in some way evinced 

That their minds were convinced. 

Something was wrong, 

The evidence was strong, 

The air was full of song : 

You woke out of sleep and heard a violin, 

A harp or a horn; 

And rose up and followed the sound growing thin 

At the break of morn. 



Music, music, music was blown 
Over the waters, out of the woodlands, 
Grassy valleys and sunny meadow lands 
In the mid spaces, tone on tone. 
The pasturing flocks were sleeker grown 
And multiplied in a way unknown. . . . 
And little Alice bright of eye 
Dreamed and began to prophesy: 
And said the strayer, the cornet player, 
Who took Starling Turner's wife away, 
Is coming back at an early day: 
Look out, said Alice, to Imogene, 
Red-lipped, bright-eyed, turned eighteen, 

[131] 



STARVED ROCK 

You have danced too much on the village green. 

Look out for the cornet player, I mean. 

I know who he is for my eyes are keen. 

Your blood is desiring, but yet serene. 

I know his face and his bright desire, 

Laurel leaves are around his brow; 

He carries a horn, but sometimes a lyre. 

His eyes are blue and his face is fire. 

Look out, said Alice, his touch is dire, 

Keep to the house, or the church's spire. 



VI 

And what was next? The girl disappeared. 
As Alice feared, no fate interfered. 
A posse collected, hunted and peered, 
Raced through the night till their eyes were bleared, 
And looked for Imogene, cried and cheered 
When a clew was found, or a doubt was cleared. 
A posse with pitch-forks, scythes and axes, 
Shot-guns, pistols, knives and rifles, 
Hunts for Imogene, never relaxes, 
Runs over meadows for luring trifles: 
The wave of grain or a weed that tosses; 
And curse and say what a terrible loss is 
Come to Spring Lake: a wife's enticed, 
And then this fairest maid is abducted. 
Why are the innocent sacrificed? 
We are a people well conducted. 
What is the curse, or is it the war? 
[ 132] 



SPRING LAKE 

Why is it every one here is housing 

Fiddlers, idlers, fancy dancers. 

At Milem Alkire's why carousing; 

Everything that the good abhor 

In lovers and romancers? 

The world is mad, the village is mad, 

Even the cattle bellow and run. 

Old maid, young maid, man and lad 

Have eaten of something half insane; 

Such antics never before were done 

And never it seems may be again 

Under the shining sun. 

And now comes villainy out of the fun. 

Come with the torch, come with the halter, 

Gather the posse, stay nor falter, 

Catch the scoundrel who spoiled our peace 

And hang him up in the maple tree's 

Highest branch. For what is the law 

If it can't slip the noose and draw 

This minstrel man to a thing of awe ? 



VII 

Then the pastor said : Talk of the gallows 
Is just the thing for it's righteous malice; 
And we need hearts with piety callous 
For work like this, I might say salus 
Populi, but bright-eyed Alice 
Can help us in this matter kinetic 
Who has grown psychic and grown prophetic, 
[ 133] 



STARVED ROCK 

Sees round corners, and looks through doors 
And spies old treasure under the floors. 
And I have heard that Alice averred, 
The cornet player's the self-same bird 
Who enticed the wife of Starling Turner 
And kidnapped Imogene; he will spurn her 
Later for some one else, unless we 
Capture and hang the vile sojourner; 
So now for Alice, he said, and bless me ! 



VIII 

Alice came out to lead the mob 

Catch the scoundrel and finish the job. 

Down to Fruitport before it is dark 

Come, said Alice, Joan of Arc. 

Farmers, butchers, cobblers, dentists, 

Lawyers, doctors, preachers, druggists 

Hustled and ran in the afternoon, 

Following Alice who led the way 

Chanting an ancient roundelay, 

A wild and haunting tune. 

Her hair streamed over her little shoulders 

Back in the wind for all beholders. 

And her little feet were as swift and white 

As waves that dance in the noonday light. 

Youths were panting, middle aged men 

Had to rest and resume again. 

She ran the posse almost to death, 

All were gasping and out of breath. 

[134] 



SPRING LAKE 

At last they halted upon the ridge. 
There! said Alice, beside the bridge 
Under its shadow. Look, he's there 
Weaving lilies in Imogene's hair; 
His musical instrument laid aside 
Now he has charmed the maiden pride 
Of Imogene who is not his bride, 
Come, said Alice, before they hide. 



IX 

They ran from the ridge, 
Looked under the bridge. 
There! he escapes, said Alice, the fay. 
Where? Howled the mob! which is the way? 
There's Imogene wrapped as if in a trance, 
Said the preacher, there where the waters dance. 
I saw as it were a shaft of light 
Steal from her side, vanish from sight. 
The cobbler said : it was like a comet ; 
The druggist, water by a bomb hit. 
Yes, said the lawyer, I heard a splashing 
And saw a light as of waters flashing 
Or a thousand arrows of splendor flying 
I heard a booming, banging, clanging 
Of a bull's hide string, it was terrifying. 
No, said Alice, this form of light, 
That stole away and vanished from sight, 
That was the fellow, said Alice, the sprite. 
[135] 



STARVED ROCK 

Go after him, follow through meadow and hollow 
The God Apollo, the great Apollo ! 



They went to Imogene then and took her, 

Spoke to her, slapped her hands and shook her, 

Asked her who it was that forsook her, 

Why she had left her home and wandered, 

What was the dream she sat and pondered, 

And Imogene said, it's a dream of dread, 

Now that the glory of it is fled. 

Where am I now, where is my lover? 

God of my dreams, singer and rover. 

I danced with the muses in flowering meadows; 

We lay on lawns of whispering shadows; 

We walked by moonlight where pine trees stood 

Feathery clear in the crystal flood; 

He gave me honey and grapes for food. 

We rode on the clouds and counted the stars. 

He sang me songs of the ancient wars. 

He told me of cities and temples builded 

Under his hand, we waded rivers 

By star-light and by sun-light gilded; 

By shades where the green of the laurel shivers. 

But it came to this, and this I see: 

Life is beautiful if you are free, 

If you live yourself like the laurel tree. 

[136] 



SPRING LAKE 



XI 

Then some of them teased her, the posse seized her, 

They tore the lilies out of her hair. 

Back to the village, exclaimed the preacher, 

Back to your home, exclaimed the teacher. 

You've been befooled, said Alice, the fay, 

And back went Imogene in despair, 

Weeping all the way! 



[137] 



THE BARBER OF SEPO 

Trimmed but not cut too short; the temples shaved, 
Neck clipped around, not shaved, an oil shampoo, 
You have a world of time before the train 
And when it comes it stops ten minutes — then 
The depot's just a block away. 

Oh yes, 
This is my own, my native town. But when 
I earn the money to get out, I go. 
I've had my share of bad luck — seems to me 
Without my fault, as least life's actinism 
Makes what we call our luck or lack of luck. . . . 

Go down this street a block, find Burney Cole 

And ask him why I was not graduated 

From Sepo's High School at the time he was. 

It was this way: I fell in love that spring 

With Lillie Balzer, and it ended us, 

Lillie and me, for finishing that year. 

I thought of Lillie morning, noon and night 

And Lillie thought of me, and so we flunked. 

That thinned the class to Burney Cole, and he 

Stood up and spoke twelve minutes scared to death. 

Progress of Science was his theme, committed 

[138] 



THE BARBER OF SEPO 

To memory, the gestures timed, they trained him 
Out in the woods near Big Creek. 

Lil and I 
Sat there and laughed — the town was in the hall, 
Applause terrific, bouquets thick as hops. 
And when they handed Burney his diploma 
The crowd went wild. 

How does this razor work? 
Not shaving you too close? I try to please . . . 
Burney was famous for a night, you see. 
They thought his piece was wonderful, such command 
Of language, depth of thought beyond his years. 
Next morning with his ears and cheeks still burning, 
Flushed like a god, as Keats says, Burney stood 
Behind the counter in the grocery store 
Beginning then to earn the means to take 
A course in Science — when a customer 
Came in and said: a piece of star tobacco, 
Young fellow, hurry! Such is fame — one night 
You're on a platform gathering in bouquets, 
Next morning without honor and forgotten, 
Commanded like a boot-black. 

Five years now 
Burney has clerked, some say has given up 
The course in science, and I hate to ask him . . . 
But as for me, there was a lot of talk, 
And Lillie went away, began to sport. 
She's been around the world, is living now 

[139] 



STARVED ROCK 

In Buenos Ayres. Love's a funny thing: 
It levels ranks, puts monarch or savant 
Beside the chorus girl and in her hands. 
I stayed here, did not have to leave for shame, 
But Lillie changed my life. 

When she was gone 
My conscience hurt me, and that very fall 
When I was most susceptible, responsive, 
And penitent, we had a great revival. 
And just to use the lingo: after much 
Wrestling at the Seat of Mercy, prayers 
And ministrations then I saw the light, 
Became converted, got the ecstasy. 
I wrote to Lillie who was in Chicago 
To seek salvation, told her of myself. 
She wrote back, you are cracked — go take a pill. . . . 
I know you've come to get your hair trimmed, shaved, 
Also to hear my story — you shall hear. 
The elders saw in me a likely man 
And said there is a preacher. First I knew 
They had a purse made up to send me off 
To learn theology, and so I went. 

I plunged into the stuff that preachers learn: 
The Hebrew language, Aramaic and Syriac; 
The Hebrew ideas — rapid survey — oh, yes, 
Rapid survey, that was the usual thing. 
Histories of Syria and Palestine; 
Theology of the Synoptics, eschatology. 
[140] 



THE BARBER OF SEPO 

Doctrine of the Trinity, Docetism, 

And Christian writings to Eusebius. 

Well, in the midst of all of this what happens? 

A fellow shows me Draper and this stuff 

Went up like shale and soft rock in a blast. 

My room mate was John Smith, he handed me 

This book of Draper's. What do you suppose? 

This scamp was there to get at secret things, 

Was laughing in his sleeve, had no belief. 

He used to say: " They'd never know me now." 

By which he meant he was a different person 

In some round dozen places, and each place 

Was different from the others, he was native 

To each place, played his part there, was unknown 

As fitted to another, hence his words 

" They'd never know me now." 

And so it was 
This John Smith acted through the course, came through 
A finished preacher. But they found me out 
As soon as Draper gnawed my faith in two. 
The good folks back in Sepo took away 
The purse they lent and left me high and dry. 
So I came back and learned the barber's trade, 
And here I am. But when I save enough 
I mean to start a little magazine 
To show what is the matter. Do you know? 

It's something on the shelf — not booze or jam : 
It's that old bible, precious family bible, 

[hi] 



STARVED ROCK 

That record of the Hebrew thought and life — 

That book that takes a course of years to study, 

Requires Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and Coptic 

And epigraphy, metaphysics, not 

Because the book itself is rich in these 

But just because when you would know a book 

In every character and turn of phrase 

And know what's back of it and went into it 

You draw the learning of the world, that's all. 

Take Plato, if you will, and study him 

After this manner, you will travel far 

In every land and realm. But this is nothing. 

The preachers are a handful to the world. 

They eat this dead stuff like bacteria 

That clean away decay. The harm is here 

Among the populace, the country, all 

That makes for life as life. 

See what I mean? 
We have three thousand people in this town. 
Say in this state there are a thousand towns, 
And say in every town on every Sunday 
In every year this book is taught and preached 
To every human being from the time 
It's five years old as long as it will stand 
And let itself be taught — what have you done? 
You have created, kept intact a body, 
An audience and voting strength — for whom, 
The reformer, the fanatic, non-conformist, 
The man of principle who wants a law 
[142] 



THE BARBER OF SEPO 

And those who, whether consciously or not, 

Live in the illusion that there is an end, 

A consummation, fifth act to this world, 

Millennium, as they say; and at the last 

When you get rid of sin (but they must say 

What sin is) then the world will be at peace, 

Life finished, perfect, nothing more to do 

But tend to business and enjoy yourself 

And die in peace, reach heaven. Don't you see? 

These people are deluded. For this stuff 

Called life is like a pan of bread you knead: 

You push it down one place and up it puffs 

In another place. And so while they control 

The stuff of life through Hebrew influence 

Of duty, business, fear, ascetism 

And yes, materialism, for it is that, 

The dough escaped, puffs out, the best of it, 

Its greater, part escapes us. So I say 

That bible taught in every village, hamlet 

And all its precepts, curses, notables, 

Preached fifty times a year creates the crowd 

That runs the country at the bidding of 

Your mediocrities, your little statesmen, 

Your little editors and moralists. 

And that's your culture, your American 

Kultur. . . . 

I'll finish you with eggs, it's better 
Than soap is for the hair. You've lots of time. 
I think I'll start my magazine next year. 

[143] 



STARVED ROCK 

Step down this way — over the bowl, that's it — 

A moment while I ring this money up. 

As I was saying — is the water cold ? — 

Now back into the chair — as I was saying 

That book upon the shelf has made our culture. 

We must undo it. . . 

Yes, your train is whistling — so long ! 



[ 144] 



THEY'D NEVER KNOW ME NOW 

Let's sit here very quiet, self-controlled, 
Talk quietly, under this glorious tree, 
The internes are too far away to hear. 
They will stand there if we are calm. 

You look 
Much better than you did. And as for me, 
Since I tried leaping from my window, I 
Seem on the mend, sleep better, do not feel 
So much like running, flying from the fears 
As I did three weeks since. Here is my tale : 

My first step in this world was as a soldier, 
Turned seventeen and off to free the Cubans. 
I landed at Matanzas, served my time. 
Oh Liberty! Oh! struggles to make free 
All peoples, everywhere! And when I saw 
The American republic move to strike 
The chains of tyranny, I said : I die 
For such a cause, or live to see it won — 
How glorious! My youthful mind was full 
Of Byron, Shelley, Paine, and many more — 
And when I saw my republic go to war, 
Just as a good Samaritan, I said, 

[us] 



STARVED ROCK 

This is my hour, I'm on the pinnacle, 
Life is divine at last. 

But on a sudden 
A north wind froze my waters, caught my stars 
To points of vision which before had been 
Mixed in the fluent time. We up and stole 
The Philippines, spit on our sacred charter, 
Turned all the thing to guts, until I heard 
Their growl alone which I thought spirit voices 
When we had warred for Cuba! 'Twas enough; 
What was my country? Just a mass of slickers 
Talking philanthropy and five per cent, 
A pious, blundering booby lodged at last 
In a great caecum mouthing Destiny. 
God, with a leader just an actor-man, 
Clean shaven, shifty, shallow, whored upon 
By mercantilists and their butcher creed. 
I mean McKinley, Hanna. Write it down: 
They barbarized our Grecian temple, placed 
Cheap colored windows in its marble walls — 
May history be their hell. 

But as for me, 
They talked of God so much, I said at last 
I'll learn all they can teach concerning God. 
This restless soldier spirit led me on, 
And just because I sensed the faithless age, 
Loveless and purposeless except for gold, 
The adventurer in me began to crop. 

[i 4 6] 



THEY'D NEVER KNOW ME NOW 

Oh yes, the Cuban business started me. 

And so I went to college to prepare 

For the ministry, as they thought, go through the course 

Called theological, saying for the first: 

" They'd never know me now." 



I see at last 
I am not one but many minds at once, 
And many personalities. As a boy 
I took the color of the leaves or wall 
Where I was resting, climbing. If in truth 
I lived three months with an uncle, then they said 
You look just like your uncle. When I worked 
Under a lawyer's tutelage, they said: 
How much your face resembles his. I knew 
My face and voice and gestures simulated 
Those I admired or lived with. But besides 
I took a certain pleasure, impish, maybe, 
In egging on, agreeing with, the souls 
Whom I sought out; I used to tell my uncle, 
A man of firmest piety, what I heard 
Of blasphemy about the village, just 
To hear him deprecate it, look with dark 
And flashing eyes upon such sin, while I, 
With serious face and earnest sympathy 
With what he felt, was laughing in my sleeve. 
Here is the germ then of my after life: 
The faculty that harmonized my hue 
Of spirit with the place, the person, while 
[147] 



STARVED ROCK 

Something in me, perhaps supremest self, 
Stood quite aloof and smiled. 



But, as I said, 
When our Republic left its hill of vision, 
Descended to the place of herding hogs, 
This self of me, the adventurer, rose up 
And led me forth to play with life, and first 
To try theology, as I have said . . . 
I was a wonder bred among the crew 
Of quiet, gate-toothed, crook-nosed psychopaths, 
The foul-breathed, thick-lipped onanists who filled 
The seminary, stared at me to see 
How I learned Sanscrit, could defend and rout 
The atheistic speculations. Well, 
What I enjoyed most was to get a crowd 
Of celibates and talk of chastity, 
And get them in a glow, and say to them: 
The mind is fortified by abstinence, 
The spirit clarified and lifted up — 
I got a thrill somehow. But all the time 
I knew a girl named Ella. Oftentimes 
Lying beside her I would shriek with laughter 
And she would ask, what is the matter, John ? 
And I would say: I'm thinking of a song 
I heard one time: "They'd never know me now." 
And Ella said : If Dr. Simpson knew 
That you were here with me, you'd take a fall 
Out of the Seminary's second floor. ... 

[i 4 8] 



THEY'D NEVER KNOW ME NOW 

But I went through and didn't fall. And thought 

This is a way to live, I'll preach awhile, 

And see what comes. I took a church and preached, 

Was known as Smith the eloquent, the earnest. 

But all the time I heard a voice that said : 

" They'd never know me now." When I came in 

The Sunday School and little children flocked 

About my knees and patient teachers looked 

With white, pure faces at me, then that voice 

" They'd never know me now " was in my ear. . . . 

Well, to go on, a widow in my church 

Young, beautiful and rich began to beat 

Her wings around my flame, and on the Sunday 

I preached about the rich young man, she came, 

Invited me to dinner. We commenced, 

Were married in six months. And to conserve 

Her properties I studied law, at last 

Was spending days with brokers, business men, 

Began to tell her that my health was failing, 

Saw doctors frequently to play the part. 

And then she said: You must resign your charge, 

Your health is breaking, dear. And I resigned 

To spend the time in checking mortgages, 

Collecting rents: — " They'd never know me now" 

We went the round of summer places, travel, 
Saw Europe, China, India and the Isles. 
Near Florence had a villa for a time, 
Met people of all kinds, when I was forty 
[149] 



STARVED ROCK 

I had a thousand selves, but if I had 

A self in truth it was submerged or scrawled 

Like a palimpsest all over and so lost. 

I didn't know myself, was anything 

To every one, and everything to all. 

I felt the walking age come on me now: 

A polar bear in a terrible rhythm swings 

His body back and forth behind the bars, 

And I would walk in restlessness or think 

Of other skies and places, teased and stung 

By memories of my other selves, by wonder 

About what may be happening here or there; 

What are they doing now? What is she doing? 

There were a dozen shes to wonder about, 

And if you think of one you wish to see, 

And dream she knows delight apart from you, 

You simply thrill, the wings you lost revolve, 

Like thumbs, vestigial stubs — but there you sit. 

Thank God the aeroplane came on to help, 

And wipe out distance, for you find at last 

Distance is tragedy, terrifies the soul 

With space which must be mastered by the soul. 

And so I bought a hydroplane. Perhaps 
Would be upon my lawn at sun-down holding 
These children on my knees, a lovely picture ! 
Then as a fish darts out of darkened water 
Into a water sun-lit, there would come 
A thought — we'll say of Alice — in two hours 
I'd be upon her little sleeping porch 
[i5o] 



THEY'D NEVER KNOW ME NOW 

Two hundred miles away, beneath the stars 
Of middle summer, having killed that space, 
And found the hour I wanted — hearing too 
" They'd never know me now " sung in my ears. 

And I remember when we were in Florence 

My tribe had gone to Milan for some weeks, 

And I was quite alone, too bored to live. 

One listless afternoon who should come in? 

My wife's friend Constance — but to tell the truth 

More friend of mine than hers, for all my life 

I seemed to have these secret understandings, 

And was two persons to a twain who thought 

They were the bond, whereas the bond existed 

Between myself and one, and to the other 

Was not so much as dreamed. 

And Constance brought 
A certain Countess with her. In a glance 
We two, the Countess and myself, beheld 
A flame that joined our hands. And in a week 
The Countess took me on her yacht to Capri, 
And round the Mediterranean. No one knew, 
Not Constance, nor my wife, for I returned 
Before she came from Milan. 

Oh that week! 
That breeze that sung the port-holes, waters blue 
And stars at night and music ; and the Countess 
Whose voice was like a lute of gold, who lived, 
[I5i] 



STARVED ROCK 

Knew life, was unafraid. She heard me say 

" They'd never know me now." And softly murmured 

Smiling the while: il lupo cangia 

II pelo ma non il vizio 

Adding, Qual matto! Something yet remains 

That makes you charming! Oh the feasts and wine, 

The songs and poems, till at last too soon 

We anchored in the bay of Naples. When 

I saw Vesuvius, then I felt again 

That sinking of the heart that I had known, 

That sickness, strange, nostalgia, from a boy, 

Of which a word again. But now it was 

Precursive of the end, the finished idyll. 

The Countess took my hand, with misty eyes — 

They let me off and rowed me to the dock, 

I caught the train to Florence, magically 

Before I had forgotten, seemed to be 

Upon the yacht still, was in truth alone 

Amid the silence of my dining room, 

Supping alone — "They'd never know me now! " 

Later I had the fever, was delirious 

And saw myself receding as if backing 

Into a funnel toward the little end, 

And growing smaller as the funnel narrowed 

Until I was so small I held myself 

Within the palm's hand of my other self, 

Laughed like a devil, scared the nurse to death, 

Saying "They'd never know me now — just look!" 

My wife too had the fever. I awoke 

[152] 



THEY'D NEVER KNOW ME NOW 

Out of this illness, found that she was gone, 

Had died a week before and for a week 

Had been entombed while I was raving — then 

If any real self of me ever was it came 

Back to me then. I bowed my head and wept 

And scanned my life back: 

What was that in me 
Which made me homesick from a boy right through 
This life of mine, not for my home, for something, 
Some place, some hand, some scene, which made me dread 
All partings, overwhelmed me with a grief 
For ended raptures, kept my brain too full 
Of memories, never lost, that grew until 
I lost myself, and seemed a thousand selves 
Wandering through a thousand years, how restless! 

Then mutterings shook our skies! Another war, 

France, Germany and England, so it seemed 

Best to return here to America. 

I gathered up the children — all but one, 

The boy eighteen escaped me, ran away 

And joined the English army. Now I saw 

One self of me repeated, that which went 

To free the Cubans! Curse these freedom wars! 

They shipped him off to India, soon he had 

His fill of liberty. But I came back 

And here I am. " They'd never know me now!" 

[153] 



STARVED ROCK 

For what is left of me, what ever was 

To be peeled off to realest core ? The soldier 

Gone out of me entirely; long ago, 

The dreamer of a better world ; the self 

That said I'm on the pinnacle, took arms 

To free the Cubans; self of me that hungered 

For pyramids and mountains, ancient streams, 

Nile and the Ganges; self of me that turned 

To be a father holding on his knees 

A romping bevy ; self of me that dreamed 

One heart, one hand enough, oh even the self 

That dreamed there is a hand a heart for me, 

Who found in truth no solace in the wife 

But only a teasing, torturing recollection 

That I had missed the one, or missed the many. 

So I was in America again, 
Had fled the war and plunged into the war: — 
The waves roared yonder, but the shores were here 
Where wreckage, putrid monsters were thrown up, 
Corpses of ancient liberties and bones 
Of treasured beauty; and I saw the Land 
Don every despot weapon, as it did 
When I fought for the Cubans, even worse. 
They shipped my boy to Africa; in spite 
Of censorship I pieced the picture out, 
Knew what he suffered, how they took his faith 
And dimmed its flame with ordure. Then came forth 
That father self of me. I brooded on 
His blue eyes, gentle ways, sat terrified 
[15+] 



THEY'D NEVER KNOW ME NOW 

And tried to trace the days through and the years 

When he had slipped from just a little boy 

Into a stripling, soldier finally — 

While I — what was I doing? Oh, my God, 

Living these other selves, oblivious 

That this boy was. I'd jump from soundest sleep 

Thinking of him in Africa, and seized 

With dreams that I must fly to him. O years 

Wherein I lost that boy. How could I live 

So many lives and not lose out of some, 

Some precious thing? Well, then I broke at last, 

They brought me here: " They'd never know me now." 



[155] 



NEL MEZZO DEL CAMMIN 

You call this a world! Cloud cuckoo town, 

Nephelo coccygia, warp and woof, 

Now at the last I write it down, 

Since I no longer have the proof 

To show it isn't opera bouffe, 

A moving picture film and scene; 

Stage world, with the glue between 

The angels' feathers, the devil's hoof 

Neither violent nor venene. 



Eheu ! The middle of the way too — 
Gethsemane and left in the lurch. 
Storms frowning up the dying day too, 
Bending a weed that was a birch. 
I can step right over the tallest church. 
Trumpets have shrunk to trumpet toys, 
Tottle-te-toot ! I hear the clocks 
Ticking in paper breasts. What noise! 
Gorges and towering rocks 
Are just the canvas He employs, 
With gelatine rivers and candy lochs, 
Shored in with painted blocks. 

I passed through a jungle where smoky mosses 
Hung from the trees, the crocodile 

[156] 



NEL MEZZO DEL CAMMIN 

Slept or clambered about the fosses; 
Buzzards roosting, not very vile; 
Rivers of red-ink shed for crosses. 
Centaurs with arrows file on file 
Drew and shouted : he seems to smile 
Let's make him weep a while. 

Look out for the lion! Said I, with a scowl, 

Let the lion growl: 

Cat-gut scraped in the painted wings. 

Does the terrible tiger howl: 

Tin cans and resined strings. 

Do the dead gibber and does the owl 

Hoot where the shroud is slipping, clings? 

Who pressed the squeaky springs 

In the death bird that it sings? 

And you, sir! Well, one time I was sure 

You carried a poisoned dart! 

And now you're empty space as pure 

As the sky when clouds are blown apart. 

Ether! Radium! Nothing! A cure 

For grit and dust which start 

Grief in this Waterbury heart. 

For I had trod the cobra, found 
He is but calico, cotton stuffed. 
The boa chased me round and round, 
Hyenas tracked me, licked and snuffed, 

[157] 



STARVED ROCK 

And made my poor heart flutter and pound, 
Until I saw the mirror is all, 
And the wood became a rare-bit dream 
With monstrous faces and figures packed. 
And then you ask: Is the mirror cracked, 
Or is it so bright that it casts a beam 
Through all the shadow scheme? 

One time I saw a river's bank 

Shaved down with spades as sheer as a wall, 

Wasp holes, snake holes cut in two 

Brought these molds of earth to view. 

I turned away where the air was blank 

And here was a thing fantastical : 

Space was cored like the honey comb 

With forms of things that crawl and roam, 

Animals, men. As I am alive 

I saw the form of a horse and cow 

Edged with air and hollow as space. 

But a horse and cow began to thrive 

In just a second, a drifting mist 

Flowed into the molds before my face. 

And the animals moved, I don't know how, 

Out of the all surrounding mesh, 

Creatures of bone and flesh! 

And it was just the same with men. I vow 
I saw an astral stuff poured in 
Pockets of air and men became 
Voices talking of good and evil, 
[■58] 



NEL MEZZO DEL CAMMIN 

Virtue, courage, vice and sin, 
God and the devil. 

For the all unfolding Air is what? 

The Great Idea, if so I may say, 

A sort of Ocean leaping to waves. 

And what do you care if they pass away? 

They sink to their source, not into graves. 

Beasts may vanish, races decay, 

The Ocean will always remain the same; 

With new waves rising, no two alike; 

Waves that are little and waves that rise 

In storms and touch the skies. 

R. Browning, you were a man of power, 
But I don't think much of your tower. 
And I see no use of blowing a horn, 
The tower is merely papier-mache, 
And comes no higher than to my knees. 
I step right over it — pick a flower, 
Purple, it may be, called heart's ease 
And go with the way of the seas. 

For I am an optimist better than you: 
This dream is hell, but it's all to the good: 
The Ocean is water in calm or flood. 
There's nothing wrecked, or wrongly wrought, 
There's nothing real but Thought! 



[159] 



THE OAK TREE 

The oak in later August, 
Before his leaves are strewn, 
And the sky is blue as June, 
Trembles from trunk to branches 
For frosts that will be soon 
From the valleys of the moon! 

For breezes blown in August 
Veer north with cold and rain; 
And the oak tree sighs and shivers 
For lights that shift and wane: 
As a strong man sees the specters 
Of age, disease and pain, 
The oak flings up to heaven 
His branches in the rain. 

September comes, September 
Spreads out a sky that chills. 
The owl hoots and the cricket 
Beside the roadway shrills, 
And on the stricken hills. 
But the oak tree, the oak tree 
Still flaunts his shining leaves. 
No change has come but swallows 
Who fled the summer eaves ! 
[160] 



THE OAK TREE 

But when October breezes, 
And cold November gales 
Descend upon the oak tree 
What strength of him avails, 
Grown naked to the tempest, 
For life that sleeps and fails? 
O oak tree, oak tree, 
The winter snow prevails! 
It cannot be your branches, 
It is the wind that wails! 



[161] 



THE HOUSE ON THE HILL 

Eagle, your broken wings are tangled 

Among the mountain ferns 

On a ledge of rock on high. 

Below the yawning chasm turns 

To blackness, but the evening planet burns 

Above the gulf in a gold and purple sky! 

Vultures and kites 

Fly to their rookeries 

In the rocks 

With swift and ragged wings against the lights. 

From levels and from leas 

Haste the returning flocks. 

Foxes have holes and serpents the grass for flight. 

Eagle, arise! It is night. 

The world's wanderer finds you 

As he climbs the mountains 

In the unending quest. 

Can you spread wings across the darkening chasm 

To the craggy nest, 

Where the foreboding mate lies still? 

Croak for the evening star, 

And beat your shattered wings against your breast! 

Across the gulf the wanderer sees afar 

A light in the house on the hill! 

[162] 



DR. ATHERTON PRESCRIBES 

Now that you've told me everything, I think 

I understand your case and can prescribe 

A course for you to follow — it remains 

For you to follow. Please, control yourself. 

Don't pick your hang-nails! Rest! be quiet now! 

And as for that wear cotton gloves or else 

You'll bite your nails until they bleed. 

But first 
A girl of twenty-two should never marry 
A man of sixty-seven as you did, 
Unless he have great strength; but then a girl 
Of twenty-two is ignorant of such things, 
And thinks a man's a man — he may have been — 
She finds that out when married. If high-minded, 
Inclined to ideals, duty, she goes on 
And sublimates her passion, for a child 
Takes up with raising roses, reading books. 
You've read a lot it seems, though here I touch 
As psychopathic expert on some things: 
You swell your own account a little — here 
Your talk of Schopenhauer made me wonder: 
But on your shelves I find your Schopenhauer 
With leaves uncut. I think you have not read him, 
But read about him may be. Here's the truth! 

[163] 



STARVED ROCK 

Some man along your way read Schopenhauer, 

And told you of him, gave these books to you, 

Perhaps, and then you talk of Schopenhauer. 

You women are an imitative lot, 

You get your thoughts from men, your criticisms 

Of life, art, books from men, and then you talk, 

Make unsuspecting suitors marvel at you 

Who do not know your wisdom has been gathered 

From earlier suitors. 

Well, now to the point: 
What ails you, how to cure you? I'll explain: 
First for this surgeon work I hold you fast 
And then I cut you to eradicate 
Your deep malignancy — no anaesthetic, 
No floating off into oblivion, 
You must be conscious, wide awake to know 
What has been done to you, and how, and where 
You have been cut, and what the growth looks like 
The moment I snip free integuments 
And lift it out. 

I asked you once to tell 
Your feeling for your husband when you married. 
You glanced with shifting eyes and said to me 
I will not tell you. There was scarce the need. 
I know myself. He was a father to you, 
Brother and mother even in the place 
Of father, mother, brother lost in childhood. 
He had some passion for you, just as much 

[i6 4 ] 



DR. ATHERTON PRESCRIBES 

As a heart extinct could have, but most of all 

He loved you as a daughter, needed you 

To light the shadows of declining life; 

And ease his weariness at close of day; 

And bring friends to his board, and rule his house, 

And guide his living in the finer things 

A woman knows. 

And you saw in his wealth 
A chance to do what you had never done, 
And have what you had hungered for, this house, 
These luxuries, this prestige. Well, behold, 
Both of you had in marriage what you saw 
Was to be had in marriage, both of you 
Regretted what you over-looked, or seeing it 
Thought it but negligible. When we attain 
The things we wish, and find they are but half, 
The half that's unattained corrupts the half 
The heart attains: It's like a rotten spot 
That rots the apple wholly. 

Let us see, 
The consequences. Wait! until I get 
A photograph of him — here's one — you have them 
In every room, for worship. I'll recur 
To this your worship. Here's a generous face, 
Thin, delicate, and thoughtful, spiritual, 
But passionless, and yet I see a trace 
Of pain here; even animals show pain 
With calmness, listlessness, and I am sure 
He suffered. How? 

[165] 



STARVED ROCK 

Well, first he could not keep 
Your pace of youth and interest, all these trips 
To sate your curiosity wore out 
His dragging flesh, and neither could his mind 
Follow your flights of spirit ever restless. 
You hated him at times when he was living 
And locked your chamber door against his hand. 
You hated him because he cheated you, 
And left you dangling, longing, desperate. 
But now that he is dead, all that's forgiven. 
Dead bodies neither stir nor disappoint. 
But gratitude can thrive in stocks and bonds 
That daily furnish forth rich wine and food. 
It's penitence and fortitude that places 
His picture in these rooms where'er you turn. 
But as he was a man, he must have been 
Denser than torpid liver not to brood 
Upon the thought he was no husband — only 
A brother, father to you — yes, that stung! 
And stung the more — when you took trips alone, 
And left him for some weeks — returned to walk 
These rooms at night and bite your nails. He knew 
A woman of your spirit needed passion, 
Something he could not give. Did you achieve 
Your body's wishes when away from him? 
You say not — and who knows? But there's the man 
You met and loved when once away — this man 
Who turns up now — of him again. 



[166] 



DR. ATHERTON PRESCRIBES 

Well, so 
Your husband dies — you honor him in death, 
As you had honored him in life, at least 
So far as man can know; dishonor secret 
Counts not at all except as it affects 
Your spirit, and if not is simply out 
Of spirit calculation — oh, you see, 
In such case, all theology and ethic 
And talk of penalty of sin blown up — 
It's simply ludicrous. You could have taken 
Love with a lover, justified your act 
By saying it hurt not this husband, since 
He never was your lover — and besides 
Women can sin and sear the memory 
Of sin with saying: No, it never was, 
It never happened, say it till they think, 
Believe themselves it never happened — well, 
So much for conscience, laws of spirit. But 
If you invited him you loved to come, 
Be here with you, when husband was away; 
And if he did not come, and you sat here 
And waited, bit your nails, — if he had come 
What then had happened? If you met him when 
You took these trips what happened? Yet you say 
You asked him here when husband was away. 
And he came not, you sat and bit your nails, 
You say you met him on these trips — no matter 
Whether it happened, happened not — the point is 
It happened afterward. 

[167] 



STARVED ROCK 

So I go on, 

You spend some months or years in biting nails, 

Take trips, and read, hunt friends, diversions, chase 

The bubble happiness to the cannon's mouth 

Of your own reputation. For instance thus: 

You loll luxuriously in a suite of rooms 

In some hotel, Chicago or New York, 

Read, bite your nails, and wait for luncheon time, 

And wait for dinner time, and wait for friends, 

Pick up acquaintances by oddest ways, 

Write letters, telephone, go out to tea, 

See plays and dance, get fagged, take veronal, 

You're restless, do not have the thing you wish 

With all this life. And out of all this waste 

Of energy, you're thinking of some man — 

Some man to come, you think of one you know 

And telephone him, take a taxi-cab 

And rush into his office, startle him 

With one great rapturous kiss — then you are scared 

And draw away, break from his mad embrace, 

And go back to your rooms and weep all night. 

This you have told me. For with all the rest 

You are the biggest coward in the world, 

And that's the trouble, for your cowardice 

Is greater than your passion, which is great 

Beyond all women I have known. 

You state 
Being as I have said — based on your words — 
You meet this pirate, and as you confess, 
[168] 



DR. ATHERTON PRESCRIBES 

He takes you without parleying or delay. 

And then you think your altars and your gods, 

Your reverence for husband dead these years 

Rattle their fragments on the temple's floor. 

This man has bowed your head, and tamed your will, 

You love him and he loves you — all is well. 

Your nerves are quieter in spite of fear. 

You think yourself in peril, yet have peace. 

The spring is yours together — but creeps in 

This cowardice of yours, this serpent terror, 

Slimed over with cold sweat. And once again 

You bite your nails and take to veronal, 

At last go back to form, which is to say 

Go on a trip as you were wont to go 

When husband lived, and run away from food, 

As you had run from hunger; but you run, 

And that's your form, your cowardice in action. 

And here your woe begins: 

But you are bold 
As the she lion when you have the chance 
To spring from ambush, you are cowardly 
Before the world, in spite of wealth and power 
Both yours, love is a shameful thing unless 
Society approves — your waitress heart 
Beats in an artist's bosom — that's the fault. 
And you who run away from love are bold 
To tell your lover that you mean to see 
This man who flaunted you and would not come, 
And tell him you have found a lover — what 

[169] 



STARVED ROCK 

Rotten with good is found here! Pare it out, 
Lest all be rotten. 



And you see this man 
*nd taunt him with your lover, have some drinks, 
At last he takes you, and the sickly dawn 
Looks in upon you — see what you have done ! 
You've run away from love where spirit is, 
And taken your desire of flesh alone, 
Or else your love is double for the time. 
In any case you have disgust of self, 
You've fed too much, are sick, look at the window 
And long to leap some several stories down 
And end it all — write all of this to him 
You left for restlessness, take veronal 
To sleep again, bite nails and walk the floor — 
See what your cowardice has done. Look here, 
Go, be promiscuous and shame it out, 
Or else refrain from what you can't control, 
And finish out your life with biting nails. 
Ten years from now what will you be, I wonder : 
You will have married, or you will have gone 
A round of lovers, even your purpose once 
As you have told me; or you'll take the cure 
Of Quietinu, Hindu thought or Science, 
Called Christian, and at sixty-five, if living, 
You'll be a little bright-eyed, active woman, 
A little queer, eccentric, full of quiddities 
Going about from place to place, exchanging 
Letters with celebrities and talking 
[170] 



DR. ATHERTON PRESCRIBES 

About the great periphery and the center 
Where God is. 

Yes, your life is in a trap. 
Get married, get a lover, work it out, 
Cleave to a chosen lover, or confess 
Yourself promiscuous — or else go mad. 



[171] 



WASHINGTON HOSPITAL 

That's right, sponge off his face. My name? Oh, yes, 
James Frothingham, a reverend, have the church 
At the corner of Ayer and Knox Streets, Methodist. 
As I was passing by a vile saloon 
Some men were entering the back room, saying 
Is he dead or drunk, and such things. I looked in, 
Went in at last and saw this fellow there, 
Hunched, doubled down into a chair asleep, 
Mud on his face as you saw, clothes bespattered, 
The smell of drink upon him. Then we took him 
And brought him here, I helped, a Christian duty. 
But more important, if he wakes I'm here 
To bring his soul to Christ before he dies — 
And he is dying. Yes, it's plain enough 
The snows of death are falling. Sponge his face, 
And wash his hands! I never saw such hands 
Slender and beautiful ! Now you have sponged 
His face, look at that brow — it terrifies — 
He looks now like a god — who is this man? 
I'll tell you all I know: These men were talking 
And this is what they said: This is the fellow 
They voted yesterday from booth to booth, 
They voted him twenty times, and kept him drunk 
To vote him. First they found him at the station, 
A little tipsy, talking of his griefs. 
[ 172] 



WASHINGTON HOSPITAL 

The conductor put him off here, being drunk. 
And so these fellows for election day 
Took him in hand and voted him around, 
This was the talk. 

Look at the curse of drink! 
If he had touched no drink, he had not been 
Tipsy to fall into these ruffian hands, 
Who gave him drink and drink and used him thus 
To violate the suffrage, lose his life 
Through drink, as he will lose it. He is dying, 
Death comes of Sin — what plainer truth than this? 
Sin blinds, too, for that brow could comprehend 
All things by using what God gave to it. 
I do not know his name, with your permission 
I'll search his pockets — yes, here is a letter — 
No signature, looks like a draught — I'll read: 

" Why have you wounded me with words like these: 

' He has great genius but no moral sense,' 

And written to another! Oh my love! 

By this love which I bear you, by the God 

Who reigns in heaven do I swear to you 

My soul is like a wandering star, consumed 

By its own passion, fire, and the eternal 

Longing for the eternal, wandering, erring, 

But flaming, loving light, aspiring to 

The Light of Lights, some sun, I do not know. 

It is incapable of aught but honor. 

And save for follies, trifles in excess, 

[173] 



STARVED ROCK 

Which I lament, but which in men of wealth, 
Or worldly power would never raise a word, 
I can recall no act of mine to bring 
A blush to your cheek or to mine. 

My love, 
My erring which has counted, by the test 
Of strength or weakness for the game of life, 
Has been Quixotic honor, chivalry. 
And to indulge this feeling I have paid, 
Though it has been my true voluptuousness, 
My highest, purest pleasure. Yes, for this 
I threw away a fortune, glad to throw it, 
Rather than suffer wrong, though trivial, 
As worldly men would count it : — for a father's 
Laughter at my writing turned away 
To follow voices, and defied his will 
To harness me to business. So it is 
To keep my spirit spotless from the world, 
As I have visioned things, I came at last 
By this deserted shore, alone, alone, 
Now quite alone since you withdrew yourself, 
Took back your hand and left me to my way, 
Traveled so long that I can see the tomb 
At the vista's end not very far. 

Oh, love, 
Why is there not a heart that loves but mine? 
If you had been a Magdalen, I had pressed 
Your head against my breast and kept you there- 

[174] 



WASHINGTON HOSPITAL 

But you — my spirit drifts with stricken wings — 

But you because of gossip, crawling words 

About my drinking, lies as I shall prove, 

Can hold a handkerchief upon your eyes 

To hide tumultuous tears, extend your hand 

And say farewell forever, cut our lives 

Of days or months, fragile and trivial 

Asunder — when your hand, your faith, your love 

Had cured me of my spirit's desolation, 

My terror of this solitude in life — 

Or if it cured me not, I had been eased, 

And you had gained for giving — what have you 

For your decision? Sorrow, if you love me, 

Perhaps a conscience whisper that you failed 

In justice, sacrifice; perhaps the thought 

Life with me drinking, to the excess you thought, 

Is better than a life where I am not. 

What have you gained? In a few years we two 

Will be at one with earth — before it comes 

Are not sweet hours together worth the cost 

Of a little drink? You who have riches, need not 

My labors for your bread, but need my love, 

Which you crush out. But as to drink, I swear 

I do not drink." 

Ahem ! the fellow stirs 
But will not wake, I fear. You heard that last: 
He swears he does not drink. Drink and untruth 
Go always hand in hand. This letter's long — 
Let's see what he comes up with at the last: 

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STARVED ROCK 

" But as to drink, I swear I do not drink — 

How if I drank could I produce the works 

I have produced? A giant's task, when drink 

Sustains me not, is not my nutriment 

As hock and soda water were for Byron, 

But sets me flaming wild, a little drink 

Will set me flaming, poisons me, I know. 

And yet I must partake of drink sometimes 

For life is flying, is recession, we 

Are shrinking back into ourselves, at last 

The arms we shrank from close about us — death's. 

And there are souls born lonely ; I am one. 

And gifted with the glance of looking through 

The shams, the opera boufte, and I am one. 

Often after a stretch of toil when I 

Come out of the trance of writing spent and wracked, 

I used to walk to High Bridge, sit and muse, 

(For this brain never stops and that's my curse,) 

Upon this monstrous world and why it is; 

And why the souls who love the beautiful, 

And love it only and are doomed to speak 

Its wonder and its terror are alone, 

Misunderstood and hunted, fouled by falsehood, 

Have crumbs upon the steps, are licked by dogs, 

Or else are starved. And why it is that I 

Must go about, a beggar, with my songs 

Exchanging them for bread. And then it is 

When this poor brain like the creative stuff, 

The central purpose, whirls, as I have written, 

And will not stop — drink! for oblivion, 

[i 7 6] 



WASHINGTON HOSPITAL 

For rest, to get away from self, back faster 
From the pursuing Nothing. 

Yet, my love, 
Think out what causes judgments, standards, tastes; 
And why it was that Southey, Wordsworth won 
The organic national praise and Shelley lost, 
And Byron lost it — Southey the sycophant, 
Wordsworth the dull adherent, renegade — 
These two against these spirits who came here 
To sing of Liberty — and look at me, 
A wanderer and a poor, rejected man, 
While usurers, slave owners rule the land, 
And the cities reek with hypocrites, who step 
On Freedom and on Beauty, are rewarded, 
Praised, fed and honored for it. Then behold 
Your friend who loves you, hunted, buffeted, 
For a little drink, when in spite of drink and even 
Because of drink, who knows? I have achieved, 
Written these books. And what is life beside, 
Whether with drink or whether with abstinence, 
Except to sing your song and die, what course 
Can stave the event, the wage of life, not sin? 
Oh if you knew what love I have for you! 
All of my powers are not enough to tell 
How all my heart is yours, how I have found 
Eternal things through you, cannot surrender 
Your love, your heart, without I lose some life, 
Some vital part of me — and yet farewell, 
For you have willed it so, and I submit. 
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STARVED ROCK 

I rise up in my loneliness, seek the sun 
To shine about me in my loneliness, 
Submit and say farewell." 

He spoke some words! 
What was it that he said? His head rolls over. 
The man is dead! What was it that he said? 
Something about " no more " it seemed to me. 
Whom shall we notify ? Go tell the police ! 
Here! wait, I overlooked some writing — yes, 
A name is on this letter — why, look here, 
It's Edgar Allan Poe ! — I know that name — 
He wrote a poem once about sleigh bells — 
His brow looks whiter, bigger than it did. 
Cover him with a sheet — I'll tell the police! 



[ 178 ] 



NEITHER FAITH NOR BEAUTY CAN 
REMAIN 

Neither faith nor beauty can remain: 
Change is our life from hour to hour, 
Pain follows after pain, 

As ruined flower lies down with ruined flower. 
***** 

Now you are mine. But in a day to be 
Beyond the seas, in cities strange and new 
To-day will be a memory 
Of a day ephemerally true. 

***** 

Last night with cheek pressed close to cheek 
Through the brief hours we slept. 
It must be always so, I heard you speak, 
Love found, forever must be kept. 

***** 

But already we were changed, even as the day 
Invisibly transforms its light. 
We prayed together then for dawn's delay, 
Praying, praying through the night. 

<f£ v£ flJP T%? 7f» 

Against the change which takes all loveliness, 
The truth our desperate hearts would keep, 
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STARVED ROCK 

The memory - to be, when comfortless, 
Save for the memory we shall yearn for sleep ; 
***** 

Against the sinking flame which no more lights 
Our faces, neither any more desired 
Through desireless days and nights, 
And senses fast expiring and expired. 



[180] 



THE WILL: A STUDY IN SLIDES 



Here is a sheet of paper written in type; 

Once it was blank, as white as innocence, 

And innocent, no poison in it, clean 

As linen paper is. Now being typed, 

The ink upon it, surely, scarce infects 

Its substance with a noxious element. 

And surely, look, typed words of this import 

Can harm no one: "To my beloved wife 

I give the income of my property 

For life, and at her death, I give my heirs 

Equally and share and share alike 

My property." 

Oh yes, but who are heirs? 
What has the type machine put on the paper, 
To tangle, poison, maim, the lives that are 
Now that the maker of the will is dead ? 



H 

Oh ho! It seems another sheet is here, 
Kay Johnson made a codicil to his will, 
Revokes the will aforesaid: Now he says: 
" To my beloved wife I give, bequeath 
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STARVED ROCK 

One-third of all my property, the entire 
Income from my property during her life. 
And at her death two-thirds thereof shall go 
Share and share alike to my legal heirs. . . ." 

Who were the heirs? Words may be seeds which sow 
Patches of noxious weeds where serpents hide. 
Words may be little vines like legs of flies 
That grow until they strangle. What are these? 
Are not gifts gentle? Oh these sheets of paper 
Read like a psalm, but back of them is what? 



in 

What does Kay Johnson leave? Why, stocks and bonds, 
And nothing else! Well, now let's take the will. 
Beloved wife in virtue of the will 
Owns in her right one-third of them — two-thirds 
Go to the heirs when she is dead. But still 
She takes the income of the whole for life. 
Meanwhile how are the heirs made safe — that is 
Who shall have the possession, hold and keep 
These two-thirds of the stocks and bonds while she, 
Beloved wife, is living? That's the point! 
Shall this beloved wife have their possession, 
Or shall the heirs? 

Again who are the heirs? 
First who are they so far as friendship goes 
To wife beloved ? Johnson said " my heirs " 

[182] 



THE WILL: A STUDY IN SLIDES 

And that means, since he had no children, brothers 

And sisters or their children. And that means 

Enemies of beloved wife — two sisters 

Of him who made this will are enemies 

Of beloved wife, have hated her always, 

Opposed her marriage to the brother. Now 

The steel jaws of the trap glint in the sun 

The grass words and their tangle pulled aside. 

Beloved wife is complexed for her life, 

Locked in a hatred with two enemies, 

These sisters, over what is left to them 

The use to one, the title to the others, 

And nothing said of custody, control. 

What was Kay Johnson thinking of, you wonder. 

He did not mean to torture beloved wife 

Or leave her in a torture chamber, yet 

He did it none the less. 

IV 

But what is this? 
The will, the codicil were made upon 
The same day, April 20th, 19 10, 
What time between them? Why the will at first 
Which only gave beloved wife the use 
And income of the property for life; 
And then this codicil after some hours 
Which gave her title to one-third, the income 
Of all the stocks and bonds for life, two-thirds 
Descending to his heirs at death of her? 
What is the explanation, Widow Johnson? 

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STARVED ROCK 



Kay Johnson was at home, ill for a day 

And drew his will, signed, sealed and witnessed it, 

And put it in a drawer. That very moment 

Beloved wife steps in the room and sees 

Kay Johnson close the drawer. What do you want? 

What can I do for you, she says to him, 

And opens up the drawer and finds the will, 

And after reading it, exclaims to him! 

Why have you done this? You have left me nothing, 

Only the income for my life! Beloved, 

Do you not want your darling to possess 

Your property or some of it as her own? 

Suppose the income fell off, and these stocks 

Began to shrivel. If I owned them, then 

I might sell if they started to decline 

And save my living. If I only have 

The income, look, I may lose all if stocks 

Lose value and I am compelled to sit 

And let them lose, not owning them. My dear, 

You do not wish to leave your darling wife 

In such a peril. And, besides, my dear, 

I can't make out why you have made this will 

And left me nothing in my right. Why so? . . . 

Kay Johnson did not answer all she asked, 
He only said: Your argument is sound, 
Disaster might befall the stocks, or start, 
And if you were alert when they began 

[i8 4 ] 



THE WILL: A STUDY IN SLIDES 

To slump you might protect yourself. All right, 
I'll change the will for you. 

VI 

But even so 
Why not bequeath beloved wife his all? 
These sisters, what were they? Not intimates! 
He did not see them much, was strained from them 
Because they had opposed his marriage, scorned 
Beloved wife, traduced her. At the last 
Something in blood controls — we wander far 
In the living days with other broods, at last 
When death stares, brothers, sisters claim the heart 
And ultimate trust. 

But there was something else: 
Kay Johnson had heard gossip, on the day 
He drew his will up, had received a letter 
Anonymous which said : " You'd better watch 
Your wife a little." And the talk of sisters 
Combined with this made argument and will 
To write this testament. For reflections came: 
What will she do when I am gone? This money 
Will give her young blood liberty to riot, 
And luxury to sate it. I'll protect her 
Against the fortune hunters who w T ill throng. 
And then there are my sisters, and no matter 
Sisters are sisters, and it is enough 
If she have but the income for her life, 
And cannot spend the corpus. 

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STARVED ROCK 

When she cried, 
Rebelled at what he did, he thought, oh well 
I'll give her all the income as I did, 
And change the will to give her for her own 
A third of all. That's why he made the will 
And changed the will. 



VII 

Beloved wife is caught: 
The sisters ask the court to put construction 
Upon the will, to hobble Widow Johnson, 
And vex and tangle her, they hate her so! 
And the court decides, since stocks and bonds make up 
What Johnson left, perishable chattels, so 
Liable to loss or waste, they should be held, 
Preserved and managed by trustees; and since 
The husbands of the sisters are good men, 
Faithful and honorable, will take the trust, 
Hold and preserve the corpus without fees, 
Manage, protect and pay beloved wife 
Her lawful income, they shall be appointed. 
And thus beloved wife falls in the hands 
Of enemies through the tenor of the will: 
" I give to my beloved wife one-third 
Of all my property, all the income during 
Her life, and at her death two-thirds to go 
Share and share alike to my legal heirs." 



[186] 



THE WILL: A STUDY IN SLIDES 



VIII 

Beloved wife lives ten years after the death 
Of beloved husband, In a hell of torture 
For bickering, fighting step by step her way 
With the trustees, who kept her ignorant 
Of matters of the estate, did what they chose, 
And doled her income out in little dribs, 
And drove her into law suits which she lost. 
She slept in thorns and woke for biting flies, 
Which buzzed around her in her waking hours — 
At last her nerves gave out and she collapsed, 
Died, left her one-third (having made no will) 
To a rascal whom she married. 

IX 

I heard a voice: 
I am Alpha and Omega, I am Will. 
Bacteria that feed on chemicals, 
And you who must have love are one to me. 
I move in you and build you, I destroy, 
Pleasure and pain are one to me, one law 
With a million rays proceed from me — you're caught, 
Live and decay and perish through my law. 
And wills are syllables of the phrase " I am." 



THE END 



Printed in the United States of America. 

[187] 



